Queeker gazed and listened in open-mouthed amazement, for the young girl who acknowledged in an offhand way that she had performed such tremendous feats of horsemanship was modest, pretty, unaffected, and feminine.
“I wonder,” thought Queeker, “if Fan—ah, I mean Katie—could do that sort of thing?”
He looked loyally at Katie, but thought, disloyally, of her cousin, accused himself of base unfaithfulness, and, seizing a hot roll, began to eat violently.
“Would you like to see the meet, Mr Queeker?” said Mr Stoutheart senior; “I can give you a good mount. My own horse, Slapover, is neither so elegant nor so high-spirited as Wildfire, but he can go over anything, and is quite safe.”
A sensitive spring had been touched in the bosom of Queeker, which opened a floodgate that set loose an astonishing and unprecedented flow of enthusiastic eloquence.
“I shall like it of all things,” he cried, with sparkling eyes and heightened colour. “It has been my ambition ever since I was a little boy to mount a thoroughbred and follow the hounds. I assure you the idea of ‘crossing country,’ as it is called, I believe, and taking hedges, ditches, five-barred gates and everything as we go, has a charm for me which is absolutely inexpressible—”
Queeker stopped abruptly, because he observed a slight flush on Fanny’s cheeks and a pursed expression on Fanny’s lips, and felt uncertain as to whether or not she was laughing at him internally.
“Well said, Queeker,” cried Mr Stoutheart enthusiastically; “it’s a pity you are a town-bred man. Such spirit as yours can find vent only in the free air of the country!”
“Amy, dear,” said Katie, with an extremely innocent look at her friend, “do huntsmen in this part of England usually take ‘everything as they go?’ I think Mr Queeker used that expression.”
“N–not exactly,” replied Amy, with a smile and glance of uncertainty, as if she did not quite see the drift of the question.