Summerhay will be at home all to-morrow, and we'll go
a long ride: and when you exercise, will you call at the inn, in case I
don't go that way, and tell Major Winton I expect him to dinner
to-night?"

"Yes, ma'am; and I've seen the pony for little Miss Gyp this morning,
ma'am. It's a mouse pony, five year old, sound, good temper, pretty
little paces. I says to the man: 'Don't you come it over me,' I says; 'I
was born on an 'orse. Talk of twenty pounds, for that pony! Ten, and
lucky to get it!' 'Well,' he says, 'Pettance, it's no good to talk round
an' round with you. Fifteen!' he says. 'I'll throw you one in,' I says,
'Eleven! Take it or leave it.' 'Ah!' he says, 'Pettance, YOU know 'ow
to buy an 'orse. All right,' he says; 'twelve!' She's worth all of
fifteen, ma'am, and the major's passed her. So if you likes to have 'er,
there she is!"

Gyp looked at her little daughter, who had given one excited hop, but now
stood still, her eyes flying up at her mother and her lips parted; and
she thought: "The darling! She never begs for anything!"

"Very well, Pettance; buy her."

The "old scoundrel" touched his forelock:

"Yes, ma'am--very good, ma'am. Beautiful evenin', ma'am." And,
withdrawing at his gait of one whose feet are at permanent right angles
to the legs, he mused: 'And that'll be two in my pocket.'

Ten minutes later Gyp, little Gyp, and Ossian emerged from the garden
gate for their evening walk. They went, not as usual, up to the downs,
but toward the river, making for what they called "the wild." This was
an outlying plot of neglected ground belonging to their farm, two sedgy
meadows, hedged by banks on which grew oaks and ashes. An old stone
linhay, covered to its broken thatch by a huge ivy bush, stood at the
angle where the meadows met. The spot had a strange life to itself in
that smooth, kempt countryside of cornfields, grass, and beech-clumps; it
was favoured by beasts and birds, and little Gyp had recently seen two
baby hares there. From an oak-tree, where the crinkled leaves were not
yet large enough to hide him, a cuckoo was calling and they stopped to
look at the grey bird till he flew off. The singing and serenity, the
green and golden oaks and ashes, the flowers--marsh-orchis, ladies'
smocks, and cuckoo-buds, starring the rushy grass--all brought to Gyp
that feeling of the uncapturable spirit which lies behind the forms of
nature, the shadowy, hovering smile of life that is