“Then what sent her off in the first instance?”
“A poll parrot, screeching in its cage, set right out in the roadway by some fool owner, who ought to be had up for murder.”
The stranger pursed up his lips in an expressive whistle, then suddenly sprang upwards as the mare, freed from her harness, rolled on her side and struggled to her feet, where she stood shivering and tossing her head, displaying fresh cuts and bruises in her dusty coat. The labourer put his hand on her neck, soothing her with gentle words and touches, while his master surveyed her with kindly concern.
“Poor brute! Better take her to the stables, James, and send off for a vet. Mrs Greville can no doubt spare a carriage to take these ladies home.” He turned towards Cornelia with an impulse of provocation which seemed to spring from some source outside himself. As a rule he was chivalrous where women were concerned, but there was something in the personality of this girl which aroused his antagonism. It seemed almost a personal offence that she should be so alert and composed while the mare bled and trembled, and that pale, lovely thing lay like a broken snowdrop on the bank. He felt a growing desire to annoy, to wound, to break down this armour of complacent vanity.
“So you could not hold her till she tired herself out? Well! the experiment seems to have answered less successfully from her point of view than your own. She’ll need a considerable time to recover her nerves and give these scratches time to heal.”
“Skin deep!” sneered Cornelia, with a curl of the lip. “I’ll drive her back in a day or two; and up and down this road until she learns not to play that trick again. I’ve never given in to a horse yet, and I’m not going to begin with a hack mare!”
The stranger eyed her with cold disapproval.
“Perhaps her owner may refuse to allow her to be experimented upon again. I should, in his place! It may be foolish, but I hate to see a brute suffer, even for the noble purpose of proving my own superiority.”
He swung away as he spoke, thus failing to see the stunned blankness of Cornelia’s expression. Straight as a dart she stood, with head thrown back, scarlet lips pressed tightly together, and dark brows knitted above the wounded tragedy of her eyes. The labourer standing by the mare’s side looked towards her with honest sympathy. He had had personal experience of the “length of the Captain’s tongue,” and was correspondingly sympathetic towards another sufferer. A tender of dumb animals, he was quick to understand the expression on the girl’s face, and to know that she had been wrongfully accused.
“Don’t you take on, miss!” he said, touching his cap with the unashamed servility at which the American girl never ceased to wonder. “I’ll look after her meself, and if the dirt is washed out of the sores at once, she’ll come to no harm. Likely as not there’ll be nothing for the vet to do by the time he arrives. At the worst it’ll be only a few stitches. She’ll soon get over that.”