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Read Ebook: Boy Woodburn: A Story of the Sussex Downs by Ollivant Alfred
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Ebook has 2955 lines and 85778 words, and 60 pages
His face was less bloated, his appearance more tidy than of old. It was clear he had been drinking less.
"What d'you think of him?" she asked.
The tout threw a critical eye over the foal. There was no question that Joses knew a thing or two about a horse.
"How's he bred, d'you know?" asked the other thoughtfully.
Boy was on the alert in a moment. That was a stable secret, and not to be disclosed.
The fat man nodded. He seemed to know all about it. Indeed, it was his business to know all about such things.
"She was a Black Death mare, that, no question," he said, and added slowly, his eye wandering over the colt: "Looks to me like a Berserk somehow." She had a feeling he was drawing her, and kept her face inscrutable in a way that did credit to the teaching of Monkey Brand. "If so, you've drawn a lucky number," continued the other. "Such things happen, you know."
Boy moved on, and was aware that he was following her.
She turned and saw his face.
There was no mischief in the man, and fluttering in his eyes there was that look of a hunted animal she had noticed in the Gap.
She stopped at once.
"What is it, Mr. Joses?" she asked.
She felt that he was calling to her for help.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Woodburn," he began.
"Yes, Mr. Joses."
Her deep voice was soft and encouraging as when she spoke to a sick creature or a child. Those who knew only the resolute girl, who went her own way with an almost fierce determination, would have been astonished at her tenderness.
"That little mistake of mine on the cliff," muttered the man.
A great impulse of generosity flooded the girl's heart and coloured her cheek.
It was clear he was not satisfied.
His eyes wandered over heaven and earth, never meeting hers.
"You've not said anything to the police about that?"
"No!" she cried.
"Nor that gentleman?"
"Mr. Silver?"
"Yes."
The other drew a deep breath.
"It wouldn't help me any if he had," he said.
He looked up into the deep sky, that was gathering the dusk, and still alive with the song of larks. "I wouldn't like to see 'em in a cage," he said quietly. "It wasn't meant. Never!"
Next Saturday, when Mr. Silver came down, she told him of the incident.
"You didn't say anything to the police, did you?" she asked anxiously.
"No," he said. "I meant to, but I forgot."
She repeated Joses's remark about the cage.
"He's been in the cage," she said quietly.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
She nodded with set lips.
"How d'you know?"
"I saw it in his eyes."
The young man was genuinely moved.
"Poor beggar!" he said.
Ragamuffin
The little affair of Joses was one of the many trifles that made for intimacy between the young man and the girl.
In spite of herself Boy found her opposition dying away. Indeed, she could no more resist him than she could resist the elements. She might put her umbrella up, but that did not stop the rain. And if the rain chose to go on long enough, the umbrella would wear away. The choice lay with the rain and not with the umbrella.
Then with the fall of the leaves old Ragamuffin began to tumble to pieces.
She watched him closely for a week. Then one October dawn, the mists hanging white in the hollows, she led him out to the edge of the wood before the lads were about. Only Monkey Brand accompanied her.
Herself she held the old pony alongside the new-dug grave, talking to him, stroking his nose. Monkey Brand, of the steady hand and loving heart, did the rest. A quarter of an hour later the girl and the little jockey came back to the yard alone. She was carrying a halter in her hand and talking of Four-Pound-the-Second.
The lads watched her surreptitiously and with brimming eyes. Albert, who prided himself on the hardness of his heart, wept and swore he hadn't.
"I'll lay she feels it," blubbered Stanley, who was not clever enough to conceal his tears.
When Silver came down for the week-end, Old Mat told him what had happened.
"That's the strength in her," he whispered. "Just took and did it, she and Monkey Brand. Never a word to her mother or me--before or since."
But the young man noticed that the girl looked haggard, wistful, more spiritual than usual. He was shy of her, and she of him.
When that evening she met him in the yard and said, "Will you come and see?" he was amazed and touched.
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