“Well, ‘like’ is a strong word, you know!” said Mr. Gunning, moving on and standing with his arms on the top of the white gate and meeting Fanny’s glance with provoking eyes.  Then, as an after-thought, “Do you think you give her enough to eat?”

“She gets a feed of oats every Sunday, and strong tea and thistles through the week,” replied Fanny Fitz in furious sarcasm.

“Yes, that’s what she looks like,” said Rupert Gunning thoughtfully.  “Connolly tells me you want to send her to the show—­Barnum’s, I suppose—­as the skeleton dude?”

“I believe you want to buy her yourself,” retorted Fanny, with a vicious dab of the soap in the daughter’s eye.

“Yes, she’s just about up to my weight, isn’t she?  By-the-bye, you haven’t had her backed yet, I believe?”

“I’m going to try her to-day!” said Fanny with sudden resolve.

“Ride her yourself!” said Mr. Gunning, his eyebrows going up into the roots of his hair.

“Yes!” said Fanny, with calm as icy as a sudden burst of struggles on the part of the daughter would admit of.

Rupert Gunning hesitated; then he said, “Well, she ought to carry a side-saddle well.  Decent shoulders, and a nice long—­” Perhaps he caught Fanny Fitz’s eye; at all events, he left the commendation unfinished, and went on, “I should like to look in and see the performance, if I may?  I suppose you wouldn’t let me try her first?  No?”

He walked on.

“Puppy, will you stay quiet!” said Fanny Fitz very crossly.  She even slapped the daughter’s soap-sud muffled person, for no reason that the daughter could see.

“Begorra, miss, I dunno,” said Johnny Connolly dubiously when the suggestion that the filly should be ridden there and then was made to him a few minutes later; “wouldn’t ye wait till I put her a few turns under the cart, or maybe threw a sack o’ oats on her back?”

But Fanny would brook no delay.  Her saddle was in the harness-room:  William O’Loughlin could help to put it on; she would try the filly at once.

Miss Fitzroy’s riding was of the sort that makes up in pluck what it wants in knowledge.  She stuck on by sheer force of character; that she sat fairly straight, and let a horse’s head alone were gifts of Providence of which she was wholly unconscious.  Riding, in her opinion, was just getting on to a saddle and staying there, and making the thing under it go as fast as possible.  She had always ridden other people’s horses, and had ridden them so straight, and looked so pretty, that—­other people in this connection being usually men—­such trifles as riding out a hard run minus both fore shoes, or watering her mount generously during a check, were endured with a forbearance not frequent in horse owners.  Hunting people, however, do not generally mount their friends, no matter how attractive, on young and valuable horses.  Fanny Fitz’s riding had been matured on well-seasoned screws, and she sallied forth to the subjugation of the Connemara filly with a self-confidence formed on experience only of the old, and the kind, and the cunning.