"Where's he going? The gate's not there," cried Muriel, running blindly along the drive. Clare followed, picking her way delicately among the chalky puddles. Then she stopped, watching the stooping figure on the great black horse.
"He's going to take the hedge. And he said that he'd never found a horse to leap it yet! Bravo, the sportsman!" she breathed. Her eyes shone. A smile of excitement parted her lips. The dimple flickered on her cheek.
Muriel gasped. "To jump? With his girth unfastened, and only one rein?" She nearly sobbed. "He'll never do it."
"He will. He will. Did you ever see such riding?"
Above the blackness of the hedge, against the transparent, water-coloured shimmer of the sky, the great horse and his rider thrust up suddenly a black silhouette. They hung for a moment thus, poised between earth and sky, then disappeared.
"Ah, good," whispered Clare, with a little sigh of pure enjoyment.
"But they'll be killed," moaned Muriel.
"Not they," laughed Clare.
The two girls walked in silence down the drive. By the gate the hoof-marks swerved to one side, cutting deeply into the turf, as though Connie had made one desperate effort to pull up. Then they went on again, along the rough, chalk road.
"They've gone a long way," remarked Clare imperturbably. "Your sister is having a good run for her money."