t was good. Directly his mistress asked
him he snatched for his head and went away smooth and swift as a racing
boat.
Boy pulled off to the right and made for the clump of trees half-way up
the hill.
The gypsy's mare was grazing by herself behind them.
The girl steadied to a halt and watched her critically, calling Billy
Bluff to heel.
She didn't want the boisterous young dog to worry the old mare just now,
and it was clear that Four Pound didn't want it either.
As Billy Bluff skirmished about, she put back her ears and lowered her
head with an irritable motion; but she was far too lazy to make the
charge she threatened.
The girl's inspection made, and conclusions drawn, she pursued her way
up the hill, popped her pony over the low post and rails which fenced
off the Paddock Close from the untamed Downs, and walked leisurely over
the brow, the gorse warm and smelling in the sun.
Beneath her a valley stretched away to the sea. There the cliff rose
steeply to a lighthouse, standing on a bare summit; dipped, and rose
again. In the hollow between the two hills a white coastguard station
sentinelled the Gap, across which the line of the sea stretched like a
silver wire.
Nobody was yet astir save a ploughman driving a team of slow-moving oxen
to the fields. To Boy the beauty of the early morning lay in the fact
that she had the hills and heavens and seas to herself, and could enjoy
them in her own way without thought of interference from a world too
frivolous, too feverish, and above all too loud, to understand.
As she rode along, her young face was uplifted to catch the rivulets of
song that came pouring down on her from the blue.
She dropped down the hill, disturbing the rabbits busy in the dew, and
bursting through the cables of gossamer that tried to stay her. A
kestrel hovered over the gorse, and she marked a badger on the hillside
shuffling home before Man and his Dogs began the old rowdy-dowdy game
once more.
Happily Billy Bluff, who was always too much absorbed in the object
immediately beneath his nose to take long views, did not see him. And
the girl was glad. Sport, in so far as it meant killing the creatures of
the wilderness for pleasure, made no appeal to her. She had no desire
whatever to see a fight between the badger and Billy Bluff. The badger
had in her judgment many qualities. She respected his desire for freedom
and determination to go his own way. Also if the pair fought, the gir
|