In a few minutes, however, he appears again, and this time on horseback. He is riding a beautiful pony, chestnut, with a rather dandified long tail and a bushy mane. Harry has a splendid seat, and is quite aware of it. Apparently he is desirous of producing an impression upon me, for he performs various astounding feats,--jumps through the swing, over a garden-seat and a wheelbarrow,--and then, patting his horse encouragingly on the neck, approaches me, his bridle over his arm.
"Will you try now?" he asks.
Of course I will. He lifts me into the saddle, where I sit sideways, buckles the stirrup shorter, quite like a grown-up admirer; and then I ride slowly and solemnly through the garden, he carefully holding me on the while. I become conscious of a wish to distinguish myself in his eyes. "I should like to try it alone," I stammer, in some confusion.
"I see you are brave; I like that," he says, resigning the bridle to me. Trot, trot goes the pony. "Faster, faster!" I cry, giving the animal a dig with my heel. The pony rears, and--I am lying on the ground, with scraped hands and a scratched chin.
"It is nothing," I cry, bravely ignoring my pain, when Harry hurries up to me with a dismayed face. "We must expect such things," I add, with dignity. "Riding is always dangerous; my father was killed by being thrown from his horse."
"Indeed? Really?" Harry says, sympathetically, as he wipes the gravel off my hands. "How long has he been dead?"
"Oh, a long time,--a year."
"My mother has been dead much longer," he says, importantly, almost boastfully. "She has been dead three years. And is yours still living?"
"N--no." And the tears, hitherto so bravely restrained, come in a torrent.
He is frightened, kneels down beside me, even then he was much taller than I,--and wipes away the tears with his pocket-handkerchief. "Poor little thing!" he murmurs, "I am so sorry for you; I did not know----" And he puts his arm round me and strokes my hair. Suddenly a delightful and strange sensation possesses me,--a feeling I have not had since my poor dear mother gave me her last kiss: my whole childish being is penetrated by it.