Flurry administered a composing kick to the ceaseless strivings of the red setters under the seat.
“I used to be rather a pet with her,” he said, after a pause; “but mind you, I haven’t got him yet, and if she gets any notion I want to sell him I’ll never get him, so say nothing about the business to her.”
The tall gates of Aussolas shrieked on their hinges as they admitted us, and shut with a clang behind us, in the faces of an old mare and a couple of young horses, who, foiled in their break for the excitements of the outer world, turned and galloped defiantly on either side of us. Flurry’s admirable cob hammered on, regardless of all things save his duty.
“He’s the only one I have that I’d trust myself here with,” said his master, flicking him approvingly with the whip; “there are plenty of people afraid to come here at all, and when my grandmother goes out driving, she has a boy on the box with a basket full of stones to peg at them. Talk of the dickens, here she is herself!”
A short, upright old woman was approaching, preceded by a white woolly dog with sore eyes and a bark like a tin trumpet; we both got out of the trap and advanced to meet the Lady of the Manor.
I may summarise her attire by saying that she looked as if she had robbed a scarecrow; her face was small and incongruously refined, the skinny hand that she extended to me had the grubby tan that bespoke the professional gardener, and was decorated with a magnificent diamond ring. On her head was a massive purple velvet bonnet.
“I am very glad to meet you, Major Yeates,” she said, with an old-fashioned precision of utterance; “your grandfather was a dancing partner of mine in old days at the Castle, when he was a handsome young aide-de-camp there, and I was—you may judge for yourself what I was.”
She ended with a startling little hoot of laughter, and I was aware that she quite realised the world’s opinion of her, and was indifferent to it.
Our way to the bogs took us across Mrs. Knox’s home farm, and through a large field in which several young horses were grazing.
“There, now, that’s my fellow,” said Flurry, pointing to a fine-looking colt, “the chestnut with the white diamond on his forehead. He’ll run into three figures before he’s done, but we’ll not tell that to the ould lady!”