Blue Gipsy's filly had broken two pairs of shafts, kicked a hole through a dash-board, and endeavoured to take a fence carriage and all, in a fixed determination not to become a harness-horse. It was evident that she had chosen her career and meant to stick to it.
"Break her to the shafts if you have to half kill her," Mr. Harry had said, but there were some things that Mr. Harry did not understand so well as Peter.
"Where's the use in spoilin' a good jumper for the sake o' makin' a poor drivin' horse?" Peter had asked the trainer, and he had added that the master was talking through his hat.
Peter had already explained the matter to Mr. Harry, but Mr. Harry was very much like the filly; when he had made up his mind he did not like to change. Peter decided to talk it over once more, however, before he risked another groom. The first groom had dislocated his shoulder, and he refused to have any further intercourse with Blue Gypsy's filly.
Poor Peter felt himself growing old under the weight of his responsibilities. Three years before he had been a care-free groom at Willowbrook; now, since Miss Ethel had married Mr. Harry, he was coachman at Jasper Place, with seven horses and three men under him. Occasionally he gazed rather wistfully across the meadow to where the Willowbrook stables showed a red blur through the gray-green trees. He had served there eleven years as stable-boy and groom, and though he had more than once tasted the end of a strap under Joe's vigorous dominion, it had been a happily irresponsible life. Not that he wished the old time back, for that would mean that there would be no Annie waiting supper for him at night in the coachman's cottage, but he did wish sometimes that Mr. Harry had a little more common sense about managing horses. Blue Gypsy's filly trotting peaceably between shafts! It was in her blood to jump, and jump she would; you might as well train a bull pup to grow up a Japanese poodle and sleep on a satin cushion.
Peter, pondering the matter, strolled over to the kitchen and inquired of Ellen where Mr. Harry was. Mr. Harry was in the library, she said, and Peter could go right through.
The carpet was soft, and he made no noise. He did not mean to listen, but he had almost reached the library door before he realized and then he stood still, partly because he was dazed, and partly because he was interested.
He did not know what had gone before, but the first thing he heard was Miss Ethel's voice, and though he could not see her, he knew from the tone what she looked like, with her head thrown back and her chin up and her eyes flashing.
"I am the best judge of my own actions," she said, "and I shall receive whom I please. You always put the wrong interpretation on everything I do, and I am tired of your interfering. If you would go away and leave me alone it would be best for us both—I feel sometimes as though I never wanted to see you again."
Then a long silence, and finally the cold, repressed tones of her husband asked: "Do you mean that?"