Harry would have crept into the straw-house; but Hugh said, pulling a book out of his pocket,

“I have a poem here for you, Harry.  I want to read it to you now; and we can’t see in there.”

They threw themselves down on the straw, and Hugh, opening a volume of Robert Browning’s Poems, read the famous ride from Ghent to Aix.  He knew the poem well, and read it well.  Harry was in raptures.

“I wish I could read that as you do,” said he.

“Try,” said Hugh.

Harry tried the first verse, and threw the book down in disgust with himself.

“Why cannot I read it?” said he.

“Because you can’t ride.”

“I could ride, if I had such a horse as that to ride upon.”

“But you could never have such a horse as that except you could ride, and ride well, first.  After that, there is no saying but you might get one.  You might, in fact, train one for yourself—­till from being a little foal it became your own wonderful horse.”

“Oh! that would be delightful!  Will you teach me horses as well, Mr. Sutherland?”

“Perhaps I will.”

That evening, at dinner, Hugh said to Mr. Arnold: 

“Could you let me have a horse to-morrow morning, Mr. Arnold?”

Mr. Arnold stared a little, as he always did at anything new.  But Hugh went on: 

“Harry and I want to have a ride to-morrow; and I expect we shall like it so much, that we shall want to ride very often.”

“Yes, that we shall!” cried Harry.

“Could not Mr. Sutherland have your white mare, Euphra?” said Mr. Arnold, reconciled at once to the proposal.

“I would rather not, if you don’t mind, uncle.  My Fatty is not used to such a burden as I fear Mr. Sutherland would prove.  She drops a little now, on the hard road.”

The fact was, Euphra would want Fatima.

“Well, Harry,” said Mr. Arnold, graciously pleased to be facetious, “don’t you think your Welsh dray-horse could carry Mr. Sutherland?”

“Ha! ha! ha!  Papa, do you know, Mr. Sutherland set him up on his hind legs yesterday, and made him walk on them like a dancing-dog.  He was going to lift him, but he kicked about so when he felt himself leaving the ground, that he tumbled Mr. Sutherland into the horse-trough.”

Even the solemn face of the butler relaxed into a smile, but Mr. Arnold’s clouded instead.  His boy’s tutor ought to be a gentleman.

“Wasn’t it fun, Mr. Sutherland?”

“It was to you, you little rogue!” said Sutherland, laughing.

“And how you did run home, dripping like a water-cart!—­and all the dogs after you!”

Mr. Arnold’s monotonous solemnity soon checked Harry’s prattle.

“I will see, Mr. Sutherland, what I can do to mount you.”

“I don’t care what it is,” said Hugh; who though by no means a thorough horseman, had been from boyhood in the habit of mounting everything in the shape of a horse that he could lay hands upon, from a cart-horse upwards and downwards.