e had been
brought to Mary Creagh, and later to Lady O'Gara. She had a way of
opening hearts and lips with that soft, steadfast glance of hers. Her
full bosom looked as though it were made for a child's head or a man's
to rest upon.

"He'll come round, he'll come round," said Patsy. "He'll have been
hurted some time or another. Whin he gets to know me he'll be biddable
enough."

"Oh, I know your theories," Sir Shawn said, a smile breaking over the
melancholy of his face. "You'll never give in that a horse could be
cursed with a natural ill-temper. But there are ill-tempered people:
why not ill-tempered horses?"

"Bedad, I dunno!" said Patsy, scratching his head thoughtfully. He
stood up with a jerk. It had occurred to him suddenly that he was
sitting while the gentlemen were standing. "I never could see inside a
human. I don't know how it is at all that I can see the mind of a
horse."

"You're a wonderful man, Patsy," said the boy gaily. "You are wasted
as our stud-groom. The scientific beggars would like to get hold of a
man who could see into the mind of a horse. Only we couldn't spare
you. I'm afraid Mustapha would only listen to reason from you, and
I've set my heart on riding him this Autumn."

"You won't do that, Master Terry, till I've had a good many more talks
with the horse. I'd be sorry to see you ridin' him yet, sir."

Terry O'Gara, brilliant in white flannels,--he had been playing tennis
with his mother's distant young cousin, Eileen Creagh--seemed to draw
the afternoon sun on to his spotlessness. Patsy Kenny, a little dazed
with fatigue, blinked at his whiteness against the green grass.

A mare came trotting up to them with her foal. The mare allowed
herself to be fondled, but the little foal was very wild and cantered
away when they tried to stroke him.

The big paddock was a pleasant sight with the mares and their foals
wandering over the young grass. The trees surrounding the paddock had
not yet lost their first fresh green: and the white red-roofed
stabling, newly built to accommodate the racing stud, made a vivid high
light against the coppices.

The three wandered on from one mare and foal to another. Patsy,
chewing a straw, offered the opinion that Magda's foal was the best of
the lot. Magda belonged to her Ladyship.

"There won't be a foal in it like that little wan," said Patsy, looking
at a tall chestnut foal, the slender legs of which seemed as though
they might