"Simon! Really! "
"Coming from nowhere and interfering in the stables as if he had lived here all his life!"
"You must be drunk, Simon, to talk like that about your own brother."
"My brother! That! Why, you poor little fool, he isn't even an Ashby. God knows what he is. Somebody's groom, I have no doubt. And that is what he should be doing. Sweeping out stables. Not lording it round the countryside on my best horses. After this, you damned little upstart, you leave the horses I intend to ride in their stable unless I say they are to be taken out, and if I say they are to be taken out it is not you who will ride them. We have plenty of other stablemen."
His chin was sticking out about two feet from Brat's face, and Brat could have brought one from the ground that would have lifted him half over the saddle room. He longed to do it, but not with Eleanor there. And not now, perhaps. Better not do anything that he could not foresee the consequences of.
"Well? Did you hear me?" shouted Simon, maddened by his silence.
"I heard you," Brat said.
"Well, see that you remember what I said. Timber is my business, and you don't put a leg across him again until I say so."
And he flung away from them towards the house.
Eleanor looked stricken.