...  The eastern sky was filled to overflowing with pure thin light.  The edges of the long dark banks of cloud that lay in front of it were rimmed with crimson fire.  And from every quarter where the shadows lay gray clouds streamed up to greet the sun.  They crept up the heavens, slow and gray and heavy, but as they climbed they lightened.  They changed from gray to white.  Their fronts were touched with the crimson fire.  They spread wide wings and set me thinking of angels worshipping, and all the waiting clouds below threw out long streamers towards the day, like soft white arms in prayer.  And behind the white curtains there, Carette lay sleeping.

...  Gray Robin fell suddenly off one leg on to the other in his sleep, and woke with a discontented snuffle.  Down in Havre Gosselin the seagulls were calling, “Miawk, miawk, miawk, miawk, miawk,—­mink, mink, mink, mink,—­kawk, kawk, kawk, kawk,—­keo, keo, keo, keo, keo.”

...  The sky up above was thin and blue.  The soft white clouds were like a mackerel’s back, and every scale was rimmed with red gold.  The east was all a-throb.  The long bands of cloud were silver above and glowing gold below.  The sun rose in a silence that seemed to me wonderful.  If all the world had broken out into the song that filled my heart it would have seemed but right.  Every cloud in all the sky seemed to bow in homage before him.

I had seen many and many a sunrise, but never before one like this.  For there, behind the curtains, Carette lay sleeping.  And I was waiting for her.  And it was Riding Day, and she was going to ride with me on Gray Robin.

And gay beyond his wont or knowledge was Gray Robin that day, though I think myself he had his own suspicions of it even in his dreams.  For when he got fully awake, and took to looking at himself, and found out by degrees how very fine he was, he felt shy and awkward, and shook himself so vigorously that bits of his finery fell off.  For, you see, Uncle George, knowing what was right and proper under the circumstances, and throwing himself into the matter because it was for me, had brought all his skill into play.  He had fished out a length of old net from his stores, and turned it to great account.  He had draped it in folds over Gray Robin’s broad flanks, and brought it round his chest, and wherever the threads would hold a stem he had stuck in red and white and yellow roses, and had tied bunches of them at his ears and along his bridle, so that the steady old horse looked like an ancient charger in his armour.

And as I watched him examining into all these things I could see his wonder grow, and he asked himself what, in the name of Hay, his friends and acquaintances would think of it all when they saw him, and he snuffled with disgust.

It was close upon six o’clock when Gray Robin pricked up his ears at sound of hoofs in the lane between the high hedges, and young Torode rode up on Black Boy.  He drew rein sharply at sight of me, and a curse jerked out of him.  And at sight of Gray Robin in his gay trappings, Black Boy danced on his hind legs and pretended to be frightened out of his wits.