for three hours, and I stuck on. I told
myself I'd rather die than come off. And I didn't come off, nor yet did
I die, as you may perceive," laughed the Honourable Jim, tossing the end
of the cigarette over the cliff, above which the gulls were wheeling and
calling in voices as shrill as those of the "Refuge" girls. "But they
had to carry us both home--the horse and myself."

"Why carry you?"

"The pair of us were done," he said. "But it was a grand afternoon we
had, Miss Lovelace, I can tell you. I wish you'd been there, child,
looking on."

It was very odd that he should say this.

For at that very instant I had found myself wishing that I could have
seen him mastering the vicious chestnut.

I should have loved to have watched that elemental struggle between man
and brute with the setting of the prairie and the wide sky. However much
of "a bad hat" and a "waster" he is, he has at least lived a man's life,
doing the things a man should do before he drifted to that attic in
Jermyn Street and those more expensive town haunts where anybody else
pays. Impulsively I looked up at the big, expensively dressed young
loiterer with the hands that bear those ineradicable marks of strenuous
toil. And, impulsively, I said:

"Why didn't you stay where you were? Oh, what a pity you ever came
back!"

There was a pause before he laughed. And then we had what was very like
a squabble! He said, in a not-very-pleased voice: "You'd scorn to say
flattering things, perhaps?"

"Well," I said, "I'm not a Celt----"

"You mean that," he said sharply, "to stand for everything that's rather
contemptible. I know! You think I'm utterly mercenary----"

"Well! You practically told me that you were that!"

"And you believe some of the things I tell you, and not others. You pick
out as gospel the ones that are least to my credit," the Honourable Jim
accused me. "How like your sex!"

How is it that these four words never fail to annoy our sex?

I said coldly: "I don't see any sense or use in our standing here
quarrelling like this, all about nothing, on such a lovely afternoon,
and all. Hadn't you better find your hostess?"

"Perhaps I had," said Mr. Burke, without moving.

I was determined he should move!

I said: "I will come a little of the way with you."

"And what about the rugs and things here?"

"I shan't lose sight of them."

"Oh."

In silence we moved off over the turf. And, ridiculous as it was, each
of us kept up t