“Pooh,” he laughed. “You’ve got me wrong. I don’t give a damn what they do. Say, the only principles I have left are principles of horsemanship. I’m highly interested in the way you sit Elfin.”
“Isn’t she a beauty!”
“She’s a pretty horse. But I wasn’t referring entirely to the equine part of the combination.”
It was the first real day they had had together since Hal’s discharge from camp the week before. The weather was like an Indian summer afternoon, one of those exceedingly mild days of February between spells of stiff cold. They had been galloping along the high road, when Moira suddenly pulled up and turned her horse into a meandering lane, so narrow that the stripped branches met in sharply accentuated patterns overhead against the sky. The fields were a monotonous, hard stubbly brown, except where pockets of soiled snow lay in the holes and under the protecting sides of hillocks.
“Is Selden Van Nostrand coming out to-morrow?” asked Hal, after they had ridden a hundred yards in silence.
“Yes.”
“Does he come out often?”
“Yes ... let’s go as far as Corey’s Inn for a bite. I’m famishing, aren’t you?”
“I don’t like him. I suppose you know that.”
“You’re not going to be like the rest of the patriots, are you? Get so you despise anybody with a critical mind?”