"Much good you'd be if you could go with me. You know, Tony, you are not at your best across a horse. As for Dad not having made arrangements--this Indian trip was got up and settled in such a tremendous hurry, he had no time to think about me at all. Listen to me now! How would you feel if when they began to mow the grass in May, and the good smell was in the air, and you saw all the others in their flannels, and heard all round you the nice deep ring of the cricket balls--and you mightn't play a stroke, and your arm as strong and your eye as true as ever it was. How would you like it?"
"I shouldn't like it at all; but----"
"Well, then, think of me. The smell of the wet dead leaves and the south wind blowing the soft rain against my face is just as full of association for me. And I never go out but I see long strings of horses in their nice new clothing, the dear darlings! And me, ME, that has gone hunting on the opening day ever since I could sit a fat little Shetland pony, ME to stay pokily at home! Tony, I simply can't! You must let me."
"Lallie, the two cases are not analogous. You can go out riding whenever you like, provided you take a man; but hunting, no. Not without your father's permission. Especially here, you are too young--too----"
"Too what? You can't say I'm timid. You can't say I couldn't ride any mount they choose to give me at that old school. Look here, Tony, suppose they said, 'You may play cricket--oh, yes, at the nets with a wee little junior boy to bowl to you; but no matches, no playing with people who play as well as you do'--would you say 'Thank you'? And that's precisely what you offer me. Let me tell you I ride just as well as you play cricket--blue and all; and to please you I've even gone pounding round that ridiculous racecourse with half a dozen other girls who sit a horse like a sack of potatoes, who'd be off at every bounce but for the pommel. D'you think I call that riding? Oh, Tony, dear, if I could just have one good gallop across country after the hounds, I'd be a better girl--much nicer and easier to get on with."
"I don't find you particularly hard to get on with as it is."
"Other people do, though"--Lallie's conscience pricked her as to Miss Foster--"and I dare say I'm often a great nuisance; but once let me work the steam off on the back of a good horse and I'd be an angel. Just you let me go out with the hounds on Thursday and you'll see."
"Lallie, my child, don't. I would if I could, but I simply dare not. Your father would never forgive me. It was quite different last winter when he was there himself to look after you."
"My dear, good man, a hunting field isn't like the 'croc' of a girls' school. No one can 'look after' anybody else. You either ride straight or you potter, or you rush your fences and get in people's way. But whatever you do you're on your own. If you come a bad smash there's always a hurdle to lay you on, and a doctor and a farmhouse somewhere about. If you think Dad kept me in his pocket three days a week throughout the hunting season all these years, you've a more fertile imagination than I gave you credit for, and Dad would be the first to disillusion you. We went to the meets together, and after that we saw precious little of one another."
"What about riding home?"