"Will Mr. Gray keep his pony here?" I asked,
"The pony will live here," said my father.
"Oh, do you think," I asked, "do you think, that if I am very good, and do my lessons well, Mr. Gray will sometimes let me ride him? He is such a darling!" By which I meant the pony, and not Mr. Gray. My father laughed, and put his hand on my shoulders.
"I have only been teasing you, Regie," he said. "You know I told you there was no tutor in the case. Mr. Andrewes and I were talking about this pony, and when Mr. Andrewes said grey, he spoke of the colour of the pony, and not of anybody's name."
"Then is the pony yours?" I asked.
My father looked at my eager face with a pleased smile.
"No, my boy," he said, "he is yours."
The wild delight with which I received this announcement, the way I jumped and danced, and that Rubens jumped and danced with me, my gratitude and my father's satisfaction, the renewed amenities between myself and my pony, his obvious knowledge of the fact that I was his master, and the running commentary of the Irishman, I will not attempt to describe.
The purchase of this pony was indeed one of my father's many kind thoughts for my welfare and amusement. My odd pilgrimage to the Rectory in search of change and society, and the pettish complaints of dulness and monotony at home which I had urged to account for my freak of "dropping in," had seemed to him not without a certain serious foundation. Except for walks about the farm with him, and stolen snatches of intercourse with the grooms, and dogs, and horses in the stables (which both he and Nurse Bundle discouraged), I had little or no amusement proper to a boy of my age. I was very well content to sit with Rubens at Mrs. Bundle's apron-string, but now and then I was, to use an expressive word, moped. My father had taken counsel with Mr. Andrewes, and the end of it all was that I found myself the master of the most charming of ponies, with the exciting prospect before me of learning to ride. The very thought of it invigorated me. Before the Irish groom went away I had asked if my new steed "could jump." I questioned my father's men as to the earliest age at which young gentlemen had ever been allowed to go out hunting, within their knowledge. I went to bed to dream of rides as wild as Mazeppa's, of hairbreadth escapes, and of feats of horsemanship that would have amazed Mr. Astley. And hopes and schemes so wild that I dared not bring them to the test of my father's ridicule, I poured with pride into Nurse Bundle's sympathetic ear.
Dear, good, kind Nurse Bundle! She was indeed a mother to me, and a mother's anxieties and disappointments were her portion. The effect of her watchful constant care of my early years for me, was whatever good there was about me in health or manners. The effect of it for her was, I believe, that she was never thoroughly happy when I was out of her sight. In these circumstances, it seemed hard that when most of my infantile diseases were over, when I was just becoming very intelligent (the best company possible, Mrs. Bundle declared), when I wore my clothes out reasonably, and had exchanged the cries which exercise one's lungs in infancy for rational conversation by the nursery fireside, I should be drawn away from nurse and nursery almost entirely. It was right and natural, but it was hard. Nurse Bundle felt it so, but she never complained. When she felt it most, she only said, "It's all just as it should be." And so it was. Boys and ducklings must wander off some time, be mothers and hens never so kind! The world is wide, and duck-ponds are deep. The young ones must go alone, and those who tremble most for their safety cannot follow to take care of them.