Had not the beast hesitated, uncertain which of the two was his tormenter, this story would be brief indeed. Before Mogridge had dismounted the two had reached safety.
The girl, almost breathless, turned to Rodney, stamped her foot and between her gasps cried: “You––you––simpleton!”
Rodney Allison, being now in his right mind and a sensible lad, realized the merited rebuke, though scarcely from the girl who had dared him to make the venture.
“I fancy Squire Danesford will think you one too, Bess, when he hears of you facing charging bulls like a Spanish picador, all to save churlish fools from their folly,” said her cousin, sneeringly.
“Don’t you dare tell him! If you do I’ll never 5 speak to you again.” There was a tearful note in the girl’s voice and a disagreeable one in the youth’s laugh.
Again he laughed and with flaming face she cried, “Perhaps you had better tell him all while you’re about it; how you sat your horse like a pat of dough and watched me do it.”
It was Rodney’s turn to laugh, which he did most heartily, and Mogridge, his face redder than his fancy waistcoat, wheeled his horse and rode after the girl who was spurring ahead.
“I’d like to roll him in the mud and you’d like to have me do it, wouldn’t you, ’Omi?”
Naomi, trudging confidingly by his side, looked inquiringly out of her big eyes, stars with plenty of dew on them now, for during the excitement she had lifted up her voice in wailing and the tears had flowed freely.
Not until the riders drew rein at “The Hall” did Henry Mogridge overtake his cousin in the headlong race home. As it was, she dismounted before he could offer assistance and ran up the steps and across the white pillared veranda into the great wainscoted hall. An instant she paused, looking up at the portrait of a beautiful woman hanging there, and then went to her room.