‘I don’t ride screws,’ said the captain, with a well-satisfied air.
He had a lofty pity for the poor creatures who had to ride anything they could get, and be thankful, and to dress themselves respectably upon something under that eight hundred a year which Brummel declared to be the lowest amount upon which a gentleman could clothe himself.
Early in the next week Bella received a little note from the captain, written at one of his London clubs.
‘Dear and liege lady,’—
‘I have bought you a perfect hunter, the gem of Sir Lionel Hawtree’s stud, sold at Tattersall’s this afternoon. I shall bring him to you on Thursday morning. Be ready for a preliminary canter in the park. He is young, and full of playfulness, but without an atom of vice. He is quite the handsomest thing you ever saw—black as my hat, and with the sinews of a gladiator, as light as an antelope, and as strong as a lion. I long to see you mounted on him.
‘Yours always,
‘Stephen Standish.’
Bella felt pleased, but slightly doubtful as to the advantage of such a combination of strength, playfulness, and agility. The horses she had ridden at Mr. Hammerman’s Riding Academy had not been given to playfulness. Nor did she feel sure that a creature with gladiatorial sinews and leonine strength would be altogether the nicest thing to ride. She might be tired before he was. However, she was full of pride at the idea of having a horse of such distinguished beauty, and of being able to lord it over the Miss Porkmans, who were very proud of their horsemanship, and very fond of talking about their hairbreadth ‘scapes and ventures, and how they had taken it out of their horses, which, according to their own account, were of a very wild and dangerous breed. Bella had no doubt she would be able to take it out of the black. She was glad he was black. There is something so common about a bay. She could hardly rest till Thursday morning came. She went half-a-dozen times to the stables to see that the black’s loose box was properly prepared, with its fringes and decorations of plaited straw, and all the newest improvements in stable fittings. She was walking up and down the broad gravel drive in front of the portico, when the captain appeared, riding his handsome chestnut, followed by a groom, who led a creature so clothed and knee-capped and hooded, that nothing was visible but checked kerseymere. He appeared, furthermore, to have a monstrous hump, which gave him the appearance of a Bactrian camel.
‘I should have ridden him over myself, but I would not bring him to you with the dust of the road upon him,’ said the captain, dismounting, and shaking hands, a lingering hand-shake with a tender little pressure at the end. ‘Now, Dobbs, off with the clothes.’
The black was stripped in a minute or two, and stood before them in all his beauty, a glossy-coated, thoroughbred, finely moulded creature, with a backward roll of his full eye, and an alert movement of his delicate ear, common to horses of his high breeding.