Boy Woodburn Part 24

The girl stuffed her towel and all it contained into the forage bag.

"Shall I give you a leg up?" asked Silver.

"It's all right," she answered.

She mounted and rode alongside him.

"Where's our friend?" he asked.

"Gone to earth."

"What!--down the Gap?" He turned on her with that delightful eagerness which constantly revealed him to her as a boy in spite of that plain, grave face of his. "Shall I draw him?"

She shook her head gravely.

"Poor old thing," she said.

He steadied instantly to her mood.

"Are you sorry for him?" he asked.

Boy looked away, shy and wary.

"Sometimes," she said. "He must have had a pig's time to be so rotten as that."

It was a new view to the young man, and sobered him.

"Perhaps," he said doubtfully. He was thinking out the question in his slow way. "It may be his own fault," he said. "You make yourself, I think."

"Part," answered the girl. "And part you are made by your surroundings.

That's the way with young stock anyhow. It's a bit how they are bred--the blood in them; and part the food they get, and the air and liberty and sun they're allowed."

"I suppose so," said Silver quietly. "Certainly our friend's food don't seem to have suited him."

The girl refused to be amused.

"He's come down," she said. "Mr. Haggard says he was once a gentleman."

"Some time since, I should guess," replied Silver. "What!"

They were moving along a narrow cart-track that led across a fallow. He was riding behind her, his eyes on her back. The bathing cap had been stuffed away, and her hair, still dark from the sea, was bare to the sun.

"I'm glad you came," she said casually over her shoulder.

"I was just out for a canter before going to look at the horses," he answered.

She nodded to where against the skyline a string of tall, thin-legged black creatures, each with a blob of jockey on his back, paraded solemnly against the sky.

"See them!" she said. "On the Mare's Back." She watched them critically.

"That's Make-Way-There--No. 2 in the string. Now she's playing up." She lifted her voice. "_Don't pull at her, you little goat!_"

"They're going to gallop her this morning, I believe," said Silver. "You hear Chukkers has let me down?"

"No!" cried the girl keenly.

"Yes; he wired last night to say he couldn't ride for me at Paris."

If it was news to the girl, it was by no means unexpected, and she took the blow with philosophical calm.

"That was certain once he knew we were training for you," she said. "I suppose dad's going to see who he'll give the ride to."

"Shall we canter?" said the young man. "I don't want to miss it."

"That's all right," replied the girl. "Father won't set 'em their work till I come."

It was clear she wished to keep him walking at her side, and he was pleased.

The incident on the cliff had brought them closer. For the first time the young man felt the warmth of the girl breaking through the barriers of her reserve. Her eyes, when they met his, were friendly, even affectionate. It was his turn to be pleasantly shy.

"D'you love them?" she asked.

She felt somehow so much older than he that she was free to question him.

"The horses?" he asked. "_Rur-rather_," with that infectious enthusiasm of his.

"You've got some pretty good ones," she told him.

"D'you think so?" keenly.

She nodded.

"Raw, but they'll come on. That's what you want."

"Any up to National form?" he asked.

"Make-Way-There might be good enough in a season or two if she'll stay,"

she said. "You can never tell. She's only four off."

They began to breast the slope of the Mare's Back.

"I've only had one real ambition in life," he said confidentially.

She looked at him.

"What?"

"To win the Nun-National."

She beamed on him friendly.