Miss Erroll’s horse was behaving badly, and for a few moments she became too thoroughly occupied with her mount to finish her sentence.

The belted groom galloped up, prepared for emergencies, and he and Selwyn sat their saddles watching a pretty battle for mastery between a beautiful horse determined to be bad and a very determined young girl who had decided he was going to be good.

Once or twice the excitement of solicitude sent the colour flying into Selwyn’s temples; the bridle-path was narrow and stiff with freezing sand, and the trees were too near for such lively manoeuvres; but Miss Erroll had made up her mind—­and Selwyn already had a humorous idea that this was no light matter.  The horse found it serious enough, too, and suddenly concluded to be good.  And the pretty scene ended so abruptly that Selwyn laughed aloud as he rejoined her: 

“There was a man—­’Boots’ Lansing—­in Bannard’s command.  One night on Samar the bolo-men rushed us, and Lansing got into the six-foot major’s boots by mistake—­seven-leaguers, you know—­and his horse bucked him clean out of them.”

“Hence his Christian name, I suppose,” said the girl; “but why such a story, Captain Selwyn?  I believe I stuck to my saddle?”

“With both hands,” he said cordially, always alert to plague her.  For she was adorable when teased—­especially in the beginning of their acquaintance, before she had found out that it was a habit of his—­and her bright confusion always delighted him into further mischief.

“But I wasn’t a bit worried,” he continued; “you had him so firmly around the neck.  Besides, what horse or man could resist such a pleading pair of arms around the neck?”

“What you saw,” she said, flushing up, “is exactly the way I shall do any pleading with the two animals you mention.”

“Spur and curb and thrash us?  Oh, my!”

“Not if you’re bridle-wise, Captain Selwyn,” she returned sweetly.  “And you know you always are.  And sometimes”—­she crossed her crop and looked around at him reflectively—­“sometimes, do you know, I am almost afraid that you are so very, very good, that perhaps you are becoming almost goody-good.”

“What!” he exclaimed indignantly; but his only answer was her head thrown back and a ripple of enchanting laughter.

Later she remarked:  “It’s just as Nina says, after all, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” he replied suspiciously; “what?”

“That Gerald isn’t really very wicked, but he likes to have us think so.  It’s a sign of extreme self-consciousness, isn’t it,” she added innocently, “when a man is afraid that a woman thinks he is very, very good?”

“That,” he said, “is the limit.  I’m going to ride by myself.”

Her pleasure in Selwyn’s society had gradually become such genuine pleasure, her confidence in his kindness so unaffectedly sincere, that, insensibly, she had fallen into something of his manner of badinage—­especially since she realised how much amusement he found in her own smiling confusion when unexpectedly assailed.  Also, to her surprise, she found that he could be plagued very easily, though she did not quite dare to at first, in view of his impressive years and experience.