'What is the matter with him?'
'I am very sorry to make any delay, Mr. Rollo, but the saddles will have to be changed. I can't ride that grey horse!' And she slipped her hat back and sat down on the doorstep, to await the process.
'There is no mistake,' said Rollo. 'The horses were saddled by my order. I told him to give you the grey. You will forgive me, I hope!'
'Without asking me!' she said, giving him a rather wide-open look of her eyes, and then in a tone as cool as his own—
'I shall ride Vixen, Mr. Rollo, if I ride at all.'
'I hope you will reconsider that.'
'Mr. Rollo,' she said in her gravest manner, 'you and I seem fated to see something of each other—so it will save trouble for you to know at once, that when I say a thing seriously, I mean it.'
He lifted his hat with the old stately air. But then he smiled at her.
'Allow me to believe that you have said nothing seriously this morning?'
Now if Wych Hazel's mood was not pliable, his was the sort of look to make it so. A calmly good-humoured brow, with a clear keen eye, and in both all that character of firm strength to which a woman's temper is apt to give way. If it had been a question of temper in the ordinary sense. But the lady of Chickaree had nothing of the sort belonging to her that was not as sweet as a rose.