Miss Creagh's soft red mouth widened into a smile which had amusement in it. She was six years older than the boy who called her a frightened child. The smile was gone before he could see it.
"I'm afraid I'm rather a coward," she said meekly. "Father has always said that it was absurd for a soldier's daughter to be alarmed of so many things."
Terry O'Gara thought at the moment that it was the most beautiful and appealing thing in the world for a girl to be frightened of many things, when the girl happened to be as pretty as Eileen Creagh, and he was the valiant youth who was to protect her from her terrors. Although he liked the feeling of protecting her he fell in with her suggestion that they should go back and talk to the foals. Miss Creagh was certainly a coward, for she cried out when a horse showed any evidence of friendliness; but when Terry suggested that they should go to the garden and look for strawberries she did not fall in with the suggestion.
"Let us wait for your mother here," she said, having gained the safe shelter of the space between the palings and the gate. "You are sure she is quite safe? Just look at her among those wild horses! There couldn't be … an accident?"
He laughed at her terrors.
"Mother was born in a stable, so to speak," he said. "She has a way with the horses. But how fond you are of her! I am so grateful to you for appreciating my mother as she deserves."
"She is an angel," said the girl fervently.
"Well, I think so." He laughed rather shyly. "It would not be easy for a boy to have better parents. Father is quite unlike Mother, of course … but … I have a tremendous admiration for him, all the same. I'll tell you a secret. I believe up to this time I have wanted more than anything else to please my father. When I had to work for exams. I hated, or any stunt of that kind, when I—oh, I oughtn't to be talking about myself. It isn't that I love Mother less, but Mother is so happy. She would always find something good in my failures. But—to see Father's face light up…!"
"He looks rather sad," Miss Creagh said wistfully.
"Yes, though he can be uncommonly jolly. We have had such rags together in London. Why, here is Shot." He stooped to fondle the head of a beautiful red setter. "He must have got shut up in the garden. What I can't understand about Shot is his indifference to you."