She drew the curb rein as she spoke, and Osmund sailed off at a long, bounding, deerlike canter over the smooth dusty track, which convinced Miss Neuchamp that she had not left all the good horses in England. The scant provender had impaired his personal appearance, but had not deprived him of that courage which he would retain as long as he possessed strength to stand on his legs.
‘I have not enjoyed a ride like this for many a day,’ she said with unusual heartiness. ‘This is a very comfortable saddle of yours, though I miss the third pommel. How do you manage, Mary Anne, to ride so squarely and easily upon that uncomfortable saddle?’
‘I’ve ridden many a mile without a saddle at all—that is, with nothing but an old gunny-bag to sit on,’ said Tottie, ‘and jumped over logs too. Of course I was a kid then.’
‘A what?’ said Miss Neuchamp anxiously.
‘Oh, a little child,’ explained Tottie. ‘I often used to go out at daylight to fetch in the cows and the working bullocks when we lived down the country. Bitter cold it was, too, in the winter; such hard frosts.’
‘Frosts?’ asked Miss Augusta. ‘Do you ever have frosts? Why, I supposed they were unknown here.’
‘You don’t suppose the whole country is like this, miss?’ said Tottie. ‘Why, near the mountains there’s snow and ice, and it rains every winter, and the floods are enough to drownd you.’
‘Are there floods too? It does not look as if they could ever come.’
‘Do you see that hut, miss? That’s our place. I heard Piambook, the black boy, tell father it would be swep’ away some day. Father laughed at him.‘
Here they arrived at the abode of Freeman père, at which Miss Neuchamp gazed with much curiosity.