“May we see the horses, Mike—are they having their lie-down, or anything?”
“Not yet, Miss; they're gettin' the rub-down now; don't ye hear Diablo bastin' the boords av his stall wid that handy off hind-foot av his?”
“There's a filly for yer life,” exclaimed the Trainer, rapturously, as he opened gently the door of Lucretia's box stall. “There's the straightest filly iver looked through a halter,” he continued, putting his arm with the gentleness of a woman over the brown mare's beautiful neck. “Come here, ould girl,” he said, coaxingly, as he drew the haltered head toward the visitors.
Mortimer looked with interest at the big, comfortable box stall, littered a foot deep with bright, clean, yellow straw. How contented and at home the mare appeared! It seemed almost a complete recompense, this attentive care, for the cruelty he imagined race horses suffered.
“You don't tie her up?” he asked.
“Tie her up!” ejaculated Mike, a fine Celtic scorn in his voice; “I'd rather tie up a wife—if I had one,” he added by way of extenuation. “No man would tie up a mare worth tin thousand dollars if she's worth a cent, an' take chances av her throwin' hersilf in the halter; av coorse she's hitched fer a bit after a gallop while she's havin' a rub-down, but that's all.”
Lucretia's black nozzle came timidly forward, and the soft, velvety upper lip snuggled Allis's cheek.
“She knows ye, Miss,” said Mike. “That's the way wit' horses—they're like children; they know friends, an' ye can't fool thim. Now she's sizin' ye up, Mister,” as Lucretia sniffed suspiciously at Mortimer's chin, keeping a wary eye on him. “She'll know if ye like horses or not, an' I'd back her opinion agin fifty min's oaths.”
Allis watched with nervous interest the investigation. She almost felt that if Lucretia liked her companion—well, it would be something less to dislike in him, at all events. Lucretia seemed turning the thing over in her mind, trying to think it out. There was some mystery about this new comer. Evidently she did not distrust him entirely, else she would have put her ears back a trifle and turned away with a little impatient warning shake of her delicate head. She always turned in that cross manner from Shandy, the stable boy. She had also discovered that the visitor was not completely a horseman; she did not investigate his pockets, nor put her head over his shoulder, as she would have done with Mr. Porter or Mike, or even with one who was a stranger, as was Mortimer, had she felt the unmistakable something which conveyed to her mind that he was of the equine brotherhood.
“Lucretia has found you out,” said Allis, presently. “You do like horses; she knows it.”