For Banjo, directly he felt his master on his back, began to galumph about the yard with a clatter of hoofs among the injured fan-tails and to the discomfiture of Maudie.

“Right!” grunted Silver, settling into his saddle.  “Now, you old hog, you!”

Brown Lollypop cocked his long ears and watched with pained disapproval the gambols of his elder.  Himself incorruptible, he was no doubt well pleased at heart that Banjo’s misconduct should throw up in high relief his own immaculate conduct.  Lollypop was in fact a bit of a prig.  Had he been a boy he would have been head of his school, a Scholar of Balliol, and President of the Union at his University.

The girl followed her leader through the gate, the brown horse stepping gingerly, swinging his tail, and feeling his bit, while Banjo galumphed and grunted to the sound of a squeaking leather.

The meet was at Folkington Green, at the foot of the Downs on the edge of the low country.

Once in the road, Silver and the girl turned their backs on the sea and made through the village.

Just outside it a familiar figure was waiting them on the road, apologetic and pleading.

“I knew he would,” said Boy.  “He started with father and got turned back.  Now he’s waiting for us. Go back, you bad dog!”

“Poor boy!—­he wants a bit of a hunt, too,” said the young man.

“I’ll hunt him!” cried the girl remorselessly, and proceeded to do so with vigour.

It was some time before the dog was routed and they were free to pursue their way.

“What’s the time?” asked the girl.

Silver referred to his wrist-watch.

“It’s nearly half-past eleven.”

“We must trot,” said Boy.

They trotted away, the brown horse and the gray side by side, the regular clap-clap of their feet sometimes overlapping and sometimes beating in unison, only to break eventually again, to the disappointment of the girl’s attentive ear.  It was the fashion amid the hunting folk to despise hacking along the road as so much waste of time.  To the girl the steady tramp along the hard road was like the march of life.  She would hack from covert to covert, one of a great cavalcade, men and women, with bobbing heads, their faces set all in the same direction, the sound of the horses’ feet splashing all round her like a stream.  She would flow along in the centre of that stream, unconscious of those about her, silent when addressed, absorbed in the only music for which she cared.

The noise of Banjo blowing his nose now brought her back to earth.  She peeped at the face of the man on the big gray at her side.

“Had a bad time?” she asked warily.

He turned to her, his face lit with the smile that took all the heaviness out of it.

“Worrying,” he said.

“Well, you’re through now,” said the girl.

“Plea Gob,” he answered, “till next time.  We’d have been in the cart but the Bank of England stood by like a brick.”