At the bank, however, the trouble began.  Despite the ministrations of Mr. Alexander and a long whip, despite the precept and example of Mr. Connolly, who performed prodigies of activity in running his pupil in at the bank and leaping on to it himself the filly time after time either ran her chest against it or swerved from it at the last instant with a vigour that plucked her preceptor from off it and scattered Fanny Fitz and the fox-terriers like leaves before the wind.  These latter were divided between sycophantic and shrieking indignation with the filly for declining to jump, and a most wary attention to the sphere of influence of the whip.  They were a mother and daughter, as conceited, as craven, and as wholly attractive as only the judiciously spoiled ladies of their race can be.  Their hearts were divided between Fanny Fitz and the cook, the rest of them appertained to the Misses Harriet and Rachael Fitzroy, whom they regarded with toleration tinged with boredom.

“I tell ye now, Masther Freddy, ‘tis no good for us to be goin’ on sourin’ the mare this way.  ’Tis what the fince is too steep for her.  Maybe she never seen the like in that backwards counthry she came from.  We’ll give her the bank below with the ditch in front of it.  ’Tisn’t very big at all, and she’ll be bound to lep with the sup of wather that’s in it.”

Thus Johnny Connolly, wiping a very heated brow.

The bank below was a broad and solid structure well padded with grass and bracken, and it had a sufficiently obvious ditch, of some three feet wide, on the nearer side.  The grand effort was duly prepared for.  The bank was solemnly exhibited to the filly; the dogs, who had with unerring instinct seated themselves on its most jumpable portion, were scattered with one threat of the whip to the horizon.  Fanny tore away the last bit of bracken that might prove a discouragement, and Johnny issued his final order.

“Come inside me with the whip, sir, and give her one good belt at the last.”

No one knows exactly how it happened.  There was a rush, a scramble, a backward sliding, a great deal of shouting, and the Connemara filly was couched in the narrow ditch at right angles to the fence, with the water oozing up through the weeds round her, like a wild duck on its nest; and at this moment Mr. Rupert Gunning appeared suddenly on the top of the bank and inspected the scene with an amusement that he made little attempt to conceal.

It took half an hour, and ropes, and a number of Rupert Gunning’s haymakers, to get Fanny Fitz’s speculation on to its legs again, and Mr. Gunning’s comments during the process successfully sapped Fanny Fitz’s control of her usually equable temper, “He’s a beast!” she said wrathfully to Freddy, as the party moved soberly homewards in the burning June afternoon, with the horseflies clustering round them, and the smell of new-mown grass wafting to them from where, a field or two away, came the rattle of Rupert Gunning’s mowing-machine.  “A crabbing beast!  It was just like my luck that he should come up at that moment and have the supreme joy of seeing Gamble—­” Gamble was the filly’s rarely-used name—­“wallowing in the ditch!  That’s the second time he’s scored off me.  I pity poor little Maudie Spicer for having such a brother!”