‘But you’ve been trying to get the horse off your hands for years,’ said Clovis.
‘I’ve got a houseful of daughters,’ said Mrs Mullet, ‘and I’ve been trying◦– well, not to get them off my hands, of course, but a husband or two wouldn’t be amiss among the lot of them; there are six of them, you know.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Clovis, ‘I’ve never counted, but I expect you’re right as to the number; mothers generally know these things.’
‘And now,’ continued Mrs Mullet, in her tragic whisper, ‘when there’s a rich husband-in-prospect imminent on the horizon Toby goes and sells him that miserable animal. It will probably kill him if he tries to ride it; anyway it will kill any affection he might have felt towards any member of our family. What is to be done? We can’t very well ask to have the horse back; you see, we praised it up like anything when we thought there was a chance of his buying it, and said it was just the animal to suit him.’
‘Couldn’t you steal it out of his stable and send it to grass at some farm miles away?’ suggested Clovis. ‘Write “Votes for Women” on the stable door, and the thing would pass for a Suffragette outrage. No one who knew the horse could possibly suspect you of wanting to get it back again.’
‘Every newspaper in the country would ring with the affair,’ said Mrs Mullet; ‘can’t you imagine the headline, “Valuable Hunter Stolen by Suffragettes”? The police would scour the countryside till they found the animal.’
‘Well, Jessie must try and get it back from Penricarde on the plea that it’s an old favourite. She can say it was only sold because the stable had to be pulled down under the terms of an old repairing lease, and that now it has been arranged that the stable is to stand for a couple of years longer.’
‘It sounds a queer proceeding to ask for a horse back when you’ve just sold him,’ said Mrs Mullet, ‘but something must be done, and done at once. The man is not used to horses, and I believe I told him it was as quiet as a lamb. After all, lambs go kicking and twisting about as if they were demented, don’t they?’
‘The lamb has an entirely unmerited character for sedateness,’ agreed Clovis.
Jessie came back from the golf links next day in a state of mingled elation and concern.
‘It’s all right about the proposal,’ she announced, ‘he came out with it at the sixth hole. I said I must have time to think it over. I accepted him at the seventh.’
‘My dear,’ said her mother, ‘I think a little more maidenly reserve and hesitation would have been advisable, as you’ve known him so short a time. You might have waited till the ninth hole.’
‘The seventh is a very long hole,’ said Jessie; ‘besides, the tension was putting us both off our game. By the time we’d got to the ninth hole we’d settled lots of things. The honeymoon is to be spent in Corsica, with perhaps a flying visit to Naples if we feel like it, and a week in London to wind up with. Two of his nieces are to be asked to be bridesmaids, so with our lot there will be seven, which is rather a lucky number. You are to wear your pearl grey, with any amount of Honiton lace jabbed into it. By the way, he’s coming over this evening to ask your consent to the whole affair. So far all’s well, but about the Brogue it’s a different matter. I told him the legend about the stable, and how keen we were about buying the horse back, but he seems equally keen on keeping it. He said he must have horse exercise now that he’s living in the country, and he’s going to start riding tomorrow. He’s ridden a few times in the Row on an animal that was accustomed to carry octogenarians and people undergoing rest cures, and that’s about all his experience in the saddle◦– oh, and he rode a pony once in Norfolk, when he was fifteen and the pony twenty-four; and tomorrow he’s going to ride the Brogue! I shall be a widow before I’m married, and I do so want to see what Corsica’s like; it looks so silly on the map.’
Clovis was sent for in haste, and the developments of the situation put before him.
‘Nobody can ride that animal with any safety,’ said Mrs Mullet, ‘except Toby, and he knows by long experience what it is going to shy at, and manages to swerve at the same time.’
‘I did hint to Mr Penricarde◦– to Vincent, I should say◦– that the Brogue didn’t like white gates,’ said Jessie.
‘White gates!’ exclaimed Mrs Mullet; ‘did you mention what effect a pig has on him? He’ll have to go past Lockyer’s farm to get to the high road, and there’s sure to be a pig or two grunting about in the lane.’
‘He’s taken rather a dislike to turkeys lately,’ said Toby.
‘It’s obvious that Penricarde mustn’t be allowed to go out on that animal,’ said Clovis, ‘at least not till Jessie has married him, and tired of him. I tell you what: ask him to a picnic tomorrow, starting at an early hour; he’s not the sort to go out for a ride before breakfast. The day after I’ll get the rector to drive him over to Crowleigh before lunch, to see the new cottage hospital they’re building there. The Brogue will be standing idle in the stable and Toby can offer to exercise it; then it can pick up a stone or something of the sort and go conveniently lame. If you hurry on the wedding a bit the lameness fiction can be kept up till the ceremony is safely over.’
Mrs Mullet belonged to an emotional race, and she kissed Clovis.
It was nobody’s fault that the rain came down in torrents the next morning, making a picnic a fantastic impossibility. It was also nobody’s fault, but sheer ill-luck, that the weather cleared up sufficiently in the afternoon to tempt Mr Penricarde to make his first essay with the Brogue. They did not get as far as the pigs at Lockyer’s farm; the rectory gate was painted a dull unobtrusive green, but it had been white a year or two ago, and the Brogue never forgot that he had been in the habit of making a violent curtsey, a back-pedal and a swerve at this particular point of the road. Subsequently, there being apparently no further call on his services, he broke his way into the rectory orchard, where he found a hen turkey in a coop; later visitors to the orchard found the coop almost intact, but very little left of the turkey.
Mr Penricarde, a little stunned and shaken, and suffering from a bruised knee and some minor damages, good-naturedly ascribed the accident to his own inexperience with horses and country roads, and allowed Jessie to nurse him back into complete recovery and golf-fitness within something less than a week.
In the list of wedding presents which the local newspaper published a fortnight or so later appeared the following item:
‘Brown saddle-horse, “The Brogue”, bridegroom’s gift: to bride.’
‘Which shows,’ said Toby Mullet, ‘that he knew nothing.’
‘Or else,’ said Clovis, ‘that he has a very pleasing wit.’
The Hen
‘Dora Bittholz is coming on Thursday,’ said Mrs Sangrail.
‘This next Thursday?’ asked Clovis.
His mother nodded.
‘You’ve rather done it, haven’t you?’ he chuckled. ‘Jane Martlet has only been here five days, and she never stays less than a fortnight, even when she’s asked definitely for a week. You’ll never get her out of the house by Thursday.’
‘Why should I?’ asked Mrs Sangrail. ‘She and Dora are good friends, aren’t they? They used to be, as far as I remember.’
‘They used to be; that’s what makes them all the more bitter now. Each feels that she has nursed a viper in her bosom. Nothing fans the flame of human resentment so much as the discovery that one’s bosom has been utilised as a snake sanatorium.’
‘But what has happened? Has some one been making mischief?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Clovis; ‘a hen came between them.’