a draught. He instructed Anders, the groom, with emphatic
and anxious repetitions regarding her care, showed him how to make Lady
Clare's bed, how to comb her mane, how to brush her (for she refused to
endure currying), how to blanket her, and how to read the thermometer
which he nailed to one of the posts of the stall. The latter proved to
be a more difficult task than he had anticipated; and the worst of it
was that he was not sure that Anders knew any more on the subject of his
instruction at the end of the lesson than he had at the beginning. To
make sure that he had understood him he asked him to enter the stall and
begin the process of grooming. But no sooner had the unhappy fellow put
his nose inside the door than Lady Clare laid back her ears in a very
ugly fashion, and with a vicious whisk of her tail waltzed around and
planted two hoof-marks in the door, just where the groom's nose had that
very instant vanished. A second and a third trial had similar results;
and as the box-stall was new and of hard wood, Erik had no wish to see
it further damaged.

"I won't have nothin' to do with that hoss, that's as certain as my name
is Anders," the groom declared; and Erik, knowing that persuasion would
be useless, had henceforth to be his own groom. The fact was he could
not help sympathizing with that fastidiousness of Lady Clare which made
her object to be handled by coarse fingers and roughly curried, combed,
and washed like a common plebeian nag. One does not commence life
associating with a princess for nothing. Lady Clare, feeling in every
nerve her high descent and breeding, had perhaps a sense of having come
down in the world, and, like many another irrational creature of her
sex, she kicked madly against fate and exhibited the unloveliest side
of her character. But with all her skittishness and caprice she was
steadfast in one thing, and that was her love for Erik. As the days went
by in country monotony, he began to feel it as a privilege rather than
a burden to have the exclusive care of her. The low, friendly neighing
with which she always greeted him, as soon as he opened the stable-door,
was as intelligible and dear to him as the warm welcome of a friend. And
when with dainty alertness she lifted her small, beautiful head, over
which the fine net-work of veins meandered, above the top of the stall,
and rubbed her nose caressingly against his cheek, before beginning to
snuff at his various pockets for the ac