He was still thinking how different she was to the little girl he had seen chasing goats on the Ridge no time before, and wondering what had changed her so quickly, when Sophie stooped to pick up her hat. Then he saw her short, dark hair twisted up into a knot at the back of her head. Feeling intuitively that he was looking at the knot she was so proud of, Sophie put on her hat quickly. A delicate colour moved on her neck and cheeks. Arthur Henty found himself looking into her suffused eyes and smiling at her smile of confusion.
"Well, we must be going now," Sophie said, a little breathlessly.
Henty said that he was going into the New Town and would walk along part of the way with her. He tucked the flowers Sophie had given him into his saddle-bag, and she and the children turned down the track. Ella, having found her tongue, chattered eagerly. Arthur Henty strolled beside them, smoking, his reins over his arm. Mirry wanted to ride his horse.
"Nobody rides this horse but me," Henty said. "She'd throw you into the middle of next week."
"I can ride," Mirry said; "ride like a flea, the boys say."
She was used to straddling any pony or horse her brothers had in the yard, and they had a name as the best horse-breakers in the district.
Henty laughed. "But you couldn't ride Beeswing," he said. "She doesn't let anybody but me ride her. You can sit on, if you like; she won't mind that so long as I've got hold of her."
The stirrup was too high for Mirry to reach, so he picked her up and put her across the saddle. The mare shivered and shrank under the light shock of Mirry's landing upon her, but Arthur Henty talked to her and rubbed her head soothingly.
"It's all right ... all right, old girl," he muttered. "Think it was one of those stinging flies? But it isn't, you see. It's only Mirry Flail. She says she's a flea of a rider. But you'd learn her, wouldn't you, if you got off with her by yourself?"
Ella giggled softly, peering at Mirry and Henty and at the beautiful golden-red chestnut he was leading. Ed. Ventry had put Sophie on his coach horses sometimes. He had let her go for a scamper with Potch on an old horse or a likely colt now and then; but she knew she did not ride well—not as Mirry rode.