16 SPORTING REMINISCENCES 



From the time the wonderful saddle came I 

 lived out riding. I was promoted to exercising 

 the young horses, a dubiously safe but fearful 

 joy, and perhaps no one but a child could realise 

 the depths of despair when Pet worth, a valuable 

 brown, bred from one of Lord Leconfield's mares, 

 fell and broke her knees. 



Then the waiting on a narrow bog road in a 

 bitter wind for my father to talk to the workmen 

 of the relief works. He was riding old Sarsefield. I 

 was on this same flighty Petworth, and the groom 

 on another three year old. There were yawning 

 bog ditches on either side, but the youngsters 

 merely stood and shivered until a start was made. 

 Then there were perhaps just a few things they 

 did not do — I don't remember them — with my 

 father mildly wondering why they were not pro- 

 perly exercised. Finally one day mine ran away, 

 or rather galloped away, with Hewitt urging me 

 to let 'im go or 'e'd kill me, and bitterly reproach- 

 ing my father for keeping the 'osses standing as 

 if they was donkeys. 



About this time I was promoted to the hunting 

 of Fanny, a black mare with contracted feet ; she 

 used to take me where she chose, and I have often 

 been told how a stranger out with the foxhounds 

 was asked whom he noticed. 



" A bundle of clothes on a nice black mare 

 going Uke mad," he said. 



This was a small child of eleven in her mother's 



