“Well!  You are the very first woman I ever saw mount herself without two men and a boy hanging on to the horse’s head.”

I rode towards the gate and Peter joined me a few minutes later on his second horse.  He praised my riding and promised he would mount me any day in the week if I could only get some one to ask me down to Brackley where he kept his horses; he said the Grafton was the country to hunt in and that, though Tom Firr, the huntsman of the Quorn, was the greatest man in England, Frank Beers was hard to beat.  I felt pleased at his admiration for my riding, but I knew Havoc had not turned a hair and that, if I went on hunting, I should kill either myself, Peter or some one else.

“Aren’t you nervous when you see a helpless woman riding one of your horses?” I said to him.

Peter:  “No, I am only afraid she’ll hurt my horse!  I take her off pretty quick, I can tell you, if I think she’s going to spoil my sale; but I never mount a woman.  Your sister is a magnificent rider, or I would never have put her on that horse.  Now come along and with any luck you will be alone with hounds this afternoon and Havoc will be knocked down at Tattersalls for five hundred guineas.”

Margot:  “You are sure you want me to go on?”

Peter:  “You think I want you to go home?  Very well!  If you go..._I_ go!”

I longed to have the courage to say, “Let us both go home,” but I knew he would think that I was funking and it was still early in the day.  He looked at me steadily and said: 

“I will do exactly what you like.”

I looked at him, but at that moment the hounds came in sight and my last chance was gone.  We shogged along to the next cover, Havoc as mild as milk.  I was amazed at Peter’s nerve:  if any horse of mine had taken such complete charge of its rider, I should have been in a state of anguish till I had separated them; but he was riding along talking and laughing in front of me in the highest of spirits.  This lack of sensitiveness irritated me and my heart sank.  Before reaching the cover, Peter came up to me and suggested that we should change Havoc’s bit.  I then perceived he was not quite so happy as I thought; and this determined me to stick it out.  I thanked him demurely and added, with a slight and smiling shrug: 

“I fear no bit can save me to-day, thank you.”

At which Peter said with visible irritability: 

“Oh, for God’s sake then don’t let us go on!  If you hate my horse I vote we go no farther!”

“What a cross man!” I said to myself, seeing him flushed and snappy; but a ringing “Halloa!” brought our deliberations to an abrupt end.

Havoc and I shot down the road, passing the blustering field; and, hopping over a gap, we found ourselves close to the hounds, who were running hell-for-leather towards a handsome country seat perched upon a hill.  A park is what I hate most out hunting:  hounds invariably lose the line, the field loses its way and I lose my temper.