rson, and even at
fifteen years of age she had a knack of following her own inclination
with that noble disregard of consequences which characterises the
heaven-born ruler.

Mr. Vawdrey had not waited more than ten minutes when there came the
thud of hoofs upon the soft track, a flash of gray in the distance,
something flying over those forky branches sprawling across the way,
then a half-sweet, half-shrill call, like a bird's, at which the
keeper's children scattered themselves like a brood of scared chickens,
and now a rush, and a gray pony shooting suddenly into the air and
coming down on the other side of the gate, as if he were a new kind of
skyrocket.

"What do you think of that, Rorie?" cried the shrill sweet voice of the
gray pony's rider!

"I'm ashamed of you, Vixen," said Roderick, "you'll come to a bad end
some of these days."

"I don't care if I do, as long as I get my fling first," replied Vixen,
tossing her tawny mane.

She was a slim young thing, in a short Lincoln-green habit. She had a
small pale face, brown eyes that sparkled with life and mischief, and a
rippling mass of reddish-auburn hair falling down her back under a
coquettish little felt hat.

"Hasn't your mamma forbidden jumping, Vixen?" remonstrated Roderick,
opening the gate and coming in.

"Yes, that she has, sir," said the old groom, riding up at a jog-trot
on his thickset brown cob. "It's quite against Mrs. Tempest's orders,
and it's a great responsibility to go out with Miss Violet. She will do
it."

"You mean the pony will do it, Bates," cried Vixen. "I don't jump. How
can I help it if papa has given me a jumping pony? If I didn't let
Titmouse take a gate when he was in the humour, he'd kick like old
boots, and pitch me a cropper. It's an instinct of self-preservation
that makes me let him jump. And as for poor dear, pretty little mamma,"
continued Vixen, addressing herself to Roderick, and changing her tone
to one of patronising tenderness, "if she had her way, I should be
brought up in a little box wrapped in jeweller's wool, to keep me safe.
But you see I take after papa, Rorie; and it comes as natural to me to
fly over gates as it does to you to get ploughed for smalls. There,
Bates," jumping off the pony, "you may take Titmouse home, and I'll
come presently and give him some apples, for he has been a dear,
darling, precious treasure of a ponykins."

She emphasised this commendation with a kiss on Titmouse's gray nose,