"Ronald is like a rock," said the master, "and you need not be afraid, but I'll take this beast along in advance. He will shy, or do some outrageous thing, and he has a mouth as sensitive as the Mississippi's, and no more."
The "beast" did indeed sidle and fret and prance, and manifest a disposition to hasten to drown himself in the reservoir, beyond the reach of self-propelling vehicles, and he repeated the performance a the sight of two other cars, although evidently less alarmed than at first, but the fourth car was in charge of a kindly-disposed driver, who came to a dead stop, out of pure amiability.
This was too much for the "beast" to endure; a moving house he was beginning to regard as tolerable, but a house which stopped short and glared at him with all its windows was more than horse nature could endure, and he started for the next county to institute an inquiry as to whether such actions were to be allowed, but found himself forced to stop, and not altogether comfortable, while the master cried good-naturedly: "Go along and take care of your car. I'll take care of my horse!"
"More than some other folks can do," said the driver, with a quiet grin at the lawyer, whose angry, "Here, what are you doing!" shouted to his plunging steed, had brought all the women in the car to the front, to explain to one another that "that man was abusing his horse, poor thing."
The car glided off, and Versatilia turned to look at it; her horse stumbled slightly, jerking her wrists sharply, and but for the cavalryman's quick shifting of the reins to his right hand and his strong grasp of her reins with his left, she might have been in danger.
"Never look back," lectured the master. Esmeralda was his pupil, and he would have taken the whole centennial quadrille and all the cabinet ladies to point his moral, had he seen them making equestrian blunders. "Where your horse has been, where, he is, is the past. Look to the future, straight before you."
"The cavalryman looked back just now," Esmeralda ventured to say.
"Yes, but he turned his horse very slightly to do it, and he may do almost anything because he has a perfect seat, and is a good horseman."
"Suppose I hear something or somebody coming up behind me?"
"If it have any intelligence, it will not hurt you. If it have none, looking will do you no good. Turn out to the right as far as you can and look to the front harder than ever, so as to be ready to guide your horse and to avoid any obstacles in case he should start to run. What is the trouble with the ladies now?"