Mr. Fairfax conducted his granddaughter to his
private room, which had a lobby and porch into the garden, and twenty
paces along the wall a door into the stable-yard. The groom who had the
nice little filly in charge to train was just bringing her out of her
stable.
"There is your Janey, Elizabeth," said her grandfather.
"Oh, what a darling!" cried Bessie in a voice that pleased him, as the
pretty creature began to dance and prance and sidle and show off her
restive caprices, making the groom's mounting her for some minutes
impracticable.
"It is only her play, miss--she ain't no vice at all," the man said,
pleading her excuses. "She'll be as dossil as dossil can be when I've
give her a gallop. But this is her of a morning--so fresh there's no
holding her."
Another groom had come to aid, and at length the first was seated firm
in the saddle, with a flowing skirt to mimic the lady that Janey was to
carry. And with a good deal of manoeuvring they got safe out of the
yard.
"You would like to follow and see? Come, then," said the squire, and led
Bessie by a short cut across the gardens to the park. Janey was flying
like the wind over the level turf, but she was well under guidance, and
when her rider brought her round to the spot where Mr. Fairfax and the
young lady stood to watch, she quite bore out his encomium on her
docility. She allowed Bessie to stroke her neck, and even took from her
hand an apple which the groom produced from a private store of
encouragement and reward in his pocket.
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