“Caneback, what are you going to ride to-morrow?” asked the lord who saw the necessity of changing the conversation, as far at least as the Major was concerned.

“Jemima;—­mare of Purefoy’s; have my neck broken, they tell me.”

“It’s not improbable,” said Sir John Purefoy who was sitting at Lady Penwether’s left hand.  “Nobody ever could ride her yet.”

“I was thinking of asking you to let Miss Trefoil try her,” said Lord Rufford.  Arabella was sitting between Sir John Purefoy and the Major.

“Miss Trefoil is quite welcome,” said Sir John.  “It isn’t a bad idea.  Perhaps she may carry a lady, because she has never been tried.  I know that she objects strongly to carry a man.”

“My dear,” said Lady Augustus, “you shan’t do anything of the kind.”  And Lady Augustus pretended to be frightened.

“Mamma, you don’t suppose Lord Rufford wants to kill me at once.”

“You shall either ride her, Miss Trefoil, or my little horse Jack.  But I warn you beforehand that as Jack is the easiest ridden horse in the country, and can scramble over anything, and never came down in his life, you won’t get any honour and glory; but on Jemima you might make a character that would stick to you till your dying day.”

“But if I ride Jemima that dying day might be to-morrow.  I think I’ll take Jack, Lord Rufford, and let Major Caneback have the honour.  Is Jack fast?” In this way the anger arising between the Senator and the Major was assuaged.  The Senator still held his own, and, before the question was settled between Jack and Jemima, had told the company that no Englishman knew how to ride, and that the only seat fit for a man on horseback was that suited for the pacing horses of California and Mexico.  Then he assured Sir John Purefoy that eighty miles a day was no great journey for a pacing horse, with a man of fourteen stone and a saddle and accoutrements weighing four more.  The Major’s countenance, when the Senator declared that no Englishman could ride, was a sight worth seeing.

That evening, even in the drawing-room, the conversation was chiefly about horses and hunting, and those terrible enemies Goarly and Scrobby.  Lady Penwether and Miss Penge who didn’t hunt were distantly civil to Lady Augustus of whom of course a woman so much in the world as Lady Penwether knew something.  Lady Penwether had shrugged her shoulders when consulted as to these special guests and had expressed a hope that Rufford “wasn’t going to make a goose of himself.”  But she was fond of her brother and as both Lady Purefoy and Miss Penge were special friends of hers, and as she had also been allowed to invite a couple of Godolphin’s girls to whom she wished to be civil, she did as she was asked.  The girl, she said to Miss Penge that evening, was handsome, but penniless and a flirt.  The mother she declared to be a regular old soldier.  As to Lady Augustus she was right; but she had perhaps failed