A Question of Bits 5 



MeiTOw's farm without turning his head, though Charlton 

 on Peeping Peggy nearly got into the brook beyond the 

 spinney. But I forgot, my dear Lawford. You didn't 

 see this, as your mare had put you down in a damp 

 ditch some time before.' 



Lawford did not by any means rehsh the aUusion. 



* The mare clumsily jumped into a fence and came 

 down,' he says, with a flush on his cheeks. ' It does 

 happen that w^ay sometimes, as you'll find out when you 

 know a little more about it. Even Charlton, 3^ou see, 

 was nearly in a mess on a perfect jumper.' 



' Chippenham's sapience does not permit him to 

 jeopardise his neck on that animal,' Starchley says, 

 directing attention to the phaeton. The chesnut mare, 

 after refusing for a long time to go near the carriage, 

 had been ridden up to it, and the result of a brief colloquy 

 between master and man w^as that the mare's head 

 was turned from the scene of action. She carried away 

 a few yards of fence, refusing the gap and declining to 

 jump, and was progressing sideways over the field she 

 had previously crossed, apparently giving very spirited 

 imitations of the severer exercises of the manege. 



The sneer on Lawford's face intensified. 



' Your straight rider is evidently in a funk. He 

 daren't get on that mare. Doesn't know how to manage 

 her, though with a horseman on her back she'd go well 

 enough. The art of horsemanship doesn't consist entirely 

 of sitting over a fence. It implies a knowledge of the 

 horse and its ways that everybody hasn't got who climbs 

 into a saddle and hangs on by the reins.' 



Starchley was on the point of translating this sen- 

 tence into something elaborate to an uncommon degree 

 when the hounds approached, trotted past the cottages 



