and was less stiff afterwards.

But I was not allowed to enjoy this illusion long. One day when I
innocently asked him if he found my hands improving, he turned upon me
his off sardonic eye. 'You'll _never_ improve, old sack-of-beans' (for
he had come to address me with a freedom I burned to resent); 'hands!
why, you're sawing my mouth off all the time. And your feet "home," and
tickling me under my shoulders at every stride--why, I'm half ashamed to
be seen about with you.'

I was deeply hurt. 'I will spare you for the future,' I said coldly;
'this is my last appearance.'

'Nonsense,' he said, 'you needn't show temper over it. Surely, if I can
put up with it, _you_ can! But we will make a new compact.' (I never
knew such a beast as he was for bargains!) 'You only worry me by
interfering with the reins. Let 'em out, and leave everything to me.
Just mention from time to time where you want to go, and I'll attend to
it,--if I've nothing better to do.'

I felt that such an understanding was destructive of all dignity,
subverting, as it did, the natural relations between horse and rider;
but I had hardly any self-respect left, and I consented, since I saw no
way of refusing. And on the whole, I cannot say, even now, that I had
any grave reason for finding fault with the use Brutus made of my
concessions; he showed more tact than I could have expected in
disguising the merely nominal nature of my authority.

I had only one serious complaint against him, which was that he had a
habit of breaking suddenly away, with a merely formal apology, to
exchange equine civilities with some cob or mare, to whose owner I was a
perfect stranger, thus driving me to invent the most desperate excuses
to cover my seeming intrusion: but I managed to account for it in
various ways, and even made a few acquaintances in this irregular and
involuntary manner. I could have wished he had been a less susceptible
animal, for, though his flirtations were merely Platonic, it is rather
humiliating to have to play 'gooseberry' to one's own horse--a part
which I was constantly being called upon to perform!

As it happened, Diana was away in Paris that Easter, and we had not met
since my appearance in the Row; but I knew she would be in town again
shortly, and with consummate diplomacy I began to excite Brutus's
curiosity by sundry careless, half-slighting allusions to Miss
Chetwynd's little mare, Wild Rose. 'She's too frisky for my taste,' I
said, '