“You’d better go out by the drive this time,” said the Efficient Sister.

“I intended to before,” I told her, “but he didn’t seem to understand the signals.”

“You’ve got spurs on.  Give him the spur.”

As a matter of fact, I had hesitated to give him the spur.  It seemed to me that he was annoyed with me anyway, and that the spur would only serve to increase his prejudice.  I wanted to rule him not by brute force but by kindness.  I wished that I could somehow make him know that I was a regular subscriber to the S.P.C.A., that I loved children and animals and all helpless creatures, both great and small, that I used the dumb brutes gently and only asked in return that they do the same by me.  But how is one to communicate such humanitarian ideas to a big, stupid, wilful, perverse, diabolical creature like a horse?

I was determined that when we started again we should not run over the lawn if I could possibly prevent it.  Therefore I had the groom head the horse down the drive, and the moment he released him, I touched Dr. Bell with the spurs.  The result was magical.  He started on a run but kept in the road where I wanted him to be, giving me, for the moment, a sense of having something almost like control over him.  At the foot of the drive was a gate which I knew could be opened without dismounting, by pulling a rope, and as no horse, unless quite out of his mind, will deliberately run into a gate, I had reason to hope that Dr. Bell would stop when he got there.  Imagine my feelings, then, when on sight of the gate he not only failed to slacken his pace, but actually dashed at it faster than ever.  Within a few feet of the barrier he seemed to pause momentarily, hunching himself in a peculiar and alarming manner:  then he arose, sailed through the air like a swallow, came down beyond like a load of trunks falling off from a truck, and galloped down the highway, seemingly quite indifferent to the fact that the stirrups were flapping at his sides and that I had moved from the saddle to a point near the base of his neck.

My position at the moment was one of considerable insecurity.  By holding on to his mane and wriggling backward I hoped to stay on, provided he did not put down his head.  If he did that, I was lost.  Fortunately for me, however, Dr. Bell did not realize with what ease he could have dropped me at that moment, and by dint of cautious but eager gymnastics, I managed to regain the saddle and the stirrups, although in doing so I pricked him several times with the spurs, with the result that, though he ran faster than ever for a time, he must have presently concluded that I didn’t care how fast he went; at all events, he slackened his pace to a canter, from which, shortly, I managed to draw him down to a trot and then to a walk.

I am glad to say that not until now had we met any vehicle.  Even while he was running, even while I was engaged in maintaining a precarious seat upon his neck, I had found time to hope fervently that we should not encounter an automobile.  I was afraid that he would jump it if we did.