The Queen of Sheba / My Cousin the Colonel | Page 2

riding was a commercial street; but now the
shops had their wooden eyelids shut tight, and were snoozing away as
comfortably and innocently as if they were not at all alive to a sharp
stroke of business in their wakeful hours. There was a charm to Lynde
in this novel phase of a thoroughfare so familiar to him, and then the
morning was perfect. The street ran parallel with the river, the glittering
harebell-blue of which could be seen across a vacant lot here and there,

or now and then at the end of a narrow lane running up from the
wharves. The atmosphere had that indescribable sparkle and bloom
which last only an hour or so after daybreak, and was charged with fine
sea-flavors and the delicate breath of dewy meadow-land. Everything
appeared to exhale a fragrance; even the weather-beaten sign of "J.
Tibbets & Son, West India Goods & Groceries," it seemed to Lynde,
emitted an elusive spicy odor.
Edward Lynde soon passed beyond the limits of the town, and was
ascending a steep hill, on the crest of which he proposed to take a
farewell survey of the picturesque port throwing off its gauzy
counterpane of sea-fog. The wind blew blithely on this hilltop; it filled
his lungs and exhilarated him like champagne; he set spur to the gaunt,
bony mare, and, with a flourish of his hand to the peaked roof of the
Nautilus Bank, dashed off at a speed of not less than four miles an
hour--for it was anything but an Arabian courser which Lynde had
hired of honest Deacon Twombly. She was not a handsome animal
either--yellow in tint and of the texture of an ancestral hair-trunk, with
a plebeian head, and mysterious developments of muscle on the hind
legs. She was not a horse for fancy riding; but she had her good
points--she had a great many points of one kind and another--among
which was her perfect adaptability to rough country roads and the sort
of work now required of her.
"Mary ain't what you'd call a racer," Deacon Twombly had remarked
while the negotiations were pending; "I don't say she is, but she's easy
on the back."
This statement was speedily verified. At the end of two miles Mary
stopped short and began backing, deliberately and systematically, as if
to slow music in a circus. Recovering from the surprise of the halt,
which had taken him wholly unawares, Lynde gathered the slackened
reins firmly in his hand and pressed his spurs to the mare's flanks, with
no other effect than slightly to accelerate the backward movement.
Perhaps nothing gives you so acute a sense of helplessness as to have a
horse back with you, under the saddle or between shafts. The reins lie
limp in your hands, as if detached from the animal; it is impossible to

check him or force him forward; to turn him around is to confess
yourself conquered; to descend and take him by the head is an act of
pusillanimity. Of course there is only one thing to be done; but if you
know what that is you possess a singular advantage over your fellow-
creatures.
Finding spur and whip of no avail, Lynde tried the effect of moral
suasion: he stroked Mary on the neck, and addressed her in terms that
would have melted the heart of almost any other Mary; but she
continued to back, slowly and with a certain grace that could have
come only of confirmed habit. Now Lynde had no desire to return to
Rivermouth, above all to back into it in that mortifying fashion and
make himself a spectacle for the townsfolk; but if this thing went on
forty or fifty minutes longer, that would be the result.
"If I cannot stop her," he reflected, "I'll desert the brute just before we
get to the toll-gate. I can't think what possessed Twombly to let me
have such a ridiculous animal!"
Mary showed no sign that she was conscious of anything
unconventional or unlooked for in her conduct.
"Mary, my dear," said Lynde at last, with dangerous calmness, "you
would be all right, or, at least, your proceeding would not be quite so
flagrant a breach of promise, if you were only aimed in the opposite
direction."
With this he gave a vigorous jerk at the left-hand rein, which caused the
mare to wheel about and face Rivermouth. She hesitated an instant, and
then resumed backing.
"Now, Mary," said the young man dryly, "I will let you have your head,
so to speak, as long as you go the way I want you to."
This manoeuvre on the side of Lynde proved that he possessed qualities
which, if skilfully developed, would have assured him success in the
higher regions of domestic diplomacy. The