At Loves Cost | Page 9

sentence, but with another "Thank you," and "I should not have liked to
have lost the lamb," went towards her horse.
Stafford advanced to put her in the saddle; but, with a little shake of the
head and a "Don't trouble," she sprang into her place and rode off.
Stafford looked after her, as he had done before; then he said, "Well,
I'm d-----d!"

He felt for his pouch, filled his pipe and lit it, and in doing so his eyes
fell upon the little wallet from which she had taken her tweezers. He
picked it up and quickly shouted to her; but the dogs were barking with
furious delight, she was cracking her whip, and she had ridden too far
for her to hear him through the noise. It would have been sheer folly to
have run after her; so, with a shrug of his shoulders, Stafford put the
little wallet in his pocket, waded the stream and, after a moment or two
of consideration, made for the inn by the nearest way, to wit, across the
hill.
The girl rode along the strip of level moorland beside the river until she
came to a narrow and not particularly well--kept road which led
through the opening of the hills towards which she had motioned her
whip. Once or twice a smile crossed her face, and once she laughed as
she thought of the comical picture which the young man had made as
he struggled to dry land with the wet lamb in his arms; and the smile
and her laugh made her face seem strangely girlish, because it was
usually so calm, so gravely self-reliant. Some girls would have been
quick to detect the romantic side of the incident, and would have dwelt
with a certain sense of satisfaction upon the fact that the young man
was tall and handsome and distinguished looking. But this girl had
scarcely noticed it; at any rate, it had not affected her in any way. She
had too much to do; there was too much upon her well-formed and
graceful shoulders to permit her to indulge in romance: Diana herself
was not more free from sentiment than this young girl who rode her
horse just like a Mexican, who was vet enough to perform a surgical
operation on a lamb, and who knew how many bushels of wheat should
run to an acre, and the best dressing for permanent pastures. It did
occur to her that she might, at any rate after he had rescued the lamb,
have given him permission to go on fishing; but she was not very sorry
for having failed to do so, for after all, he had been poaching, and, as
she had said, poaching was in her eyes a crime.
She went down the road at a swift trot, and presently it was blocked by
a pair of wrought-iron gates, so exquisite in their antique
conscientiousness that many a mushroom peer would have given
almost their weight in gold to place them at the beginning of his newly

made park; but no one came to open them, they were closed by a
heavily padlocked chain, and the lodge beside them was empty and
dilapidated; and the girl rode beside the lichen-covered wall in which
they stood until she came to an opening leading to an old arch which
faced a broad and spacious court-yard. As she rode beneath the arch a
number of dogs yelped a welcome from kennels or behind stable
half-doors, and a bent old man, dressed like something between a
stableman and a butler, came forward, touching his forehead, to take
her horse. She slipped from the saddle, patted the horse, and murmured
a word or two of endearment; but her bright eyes flashed round the
court-yard with a glance of responsibility.
"Have you brought the colt in, Jason?" she asked.
Jason touched his forehead again.
"Yes, Miss Ida. It took me three-quarters of an hour; it won't come to
me like it does to you. It's in a loose stall."
"Saddle it to-morrow morning," she said, "and I will come and try it.
The brindle cow has got into the corn, and the fence wants mending
down by the pool; you must get William to help you, and do it at once.
He has taken the steers to market, I suppose? I didn't see them in the
three acre. Oh, and, Jason, I found someone fishing in the dale; you
must get a notice board and put it up where the road runs near the river;
the tourists' time is coming on, and though they don't often come this
side of the lake, some of them may, and we can't afford to have the
river poached. And, Jason, look to Ruppert's off-hind shoe; I think