dazzles. Then I discovered that some
one had got hold of the cavesson rope and had hauled us in, as if we
were salmon; Johnny had grabbed me by the left leg, and was trying to
drag me off the filly's back; William O'Loughlin had broken two pots of
geraniums, and was praying loudly among the fragments; and Aunt Harriet
and Aunt Rachel, who don't to this hour realise that anything unusual
had happened, were reproachfully collecting the trampled remnants of the
begonias."

It was, perhaps unworthy on Fanny Fitz's part to conceal the painful
fact that it was that distinguished fisherman, Mr. Rupert Gunning, who
had landed her and the Connemara filly. Freddy Alexander, however, heard
the story in its integrity, and commented on it with his usual candour.
"I don't know which was the bigger fool, you or Johnny," he said; "I
think you ought to be jolly grateful to old Rupert!"

"Well, I'm not!" returned Fanny Fitz.

After this episode the training of the filly proceeded with more system
and with entire success. Her nerves having been steadied by an hour in
the lunge with a sack of oats strapped, Mazeppa-like, on to her back,
she was mounted without difficulty, and was thereafter ridden daily. By
the time Fanny's muscles and joints had recovered from their first
attempt at rough-riding, the filly was taking her place as a reasonable
member of society, and her nerves, which had been as much _en evidence_
as her bones, were, like the latter, finding their proper level, and
becoming clothed with tranquillity and fat. The Dublin Horse Show drew
near, and, abetted by Mr. Alexander, Fanny Fitz filled the entry forms
and drew the necessary cheque, and then fell back in her chair and gazed
at the attentive dogs with fateful eyes.

"Dogs!" she said, "if I don't sell the filly I am done for!"

The mother scratched languidly behind her ear till she yawned musically,
but said nothing. The daughter, who was an enthusiast, gave a sudden
bound on to Miss Fitzroy's lap, and thus it was that the cheque was
countersigned with two blots and a paw mark.

None the less, the bank honoured it, being a kind bank, and not desirous
to emphasise too abruptly the fact that Fanny Fitz was overdrawn.

In spite of, or rather, perhaps, in consequence of this fact, it would
have been hard to find a smarter and more prosperous-looking young woman
than the owner of No. 548, as she signed her name at the season-ticket
turnstile and entered the wide soft ai