“It was adding insult to injury,” answered Guy.  “If Parliament does not do something for you all soon, there will be another exodus of the Parthenidae.”

Charley looked at his friend admiringly, as he always did when Guy was classical in his allusions; but the unwonted effort had evidently exhausted him, and he lapsed into silence.

We rode out that afternoon to make some calls in the neighborhood, and, in returning, Livingstone proposed a short cut through a line of gates, with a short interval of cross-country work.

His cousin looked delighted, Bruce decidedly uncomfortable, though, of course, he could not refuse.  He was riding Kathleen, an Irish mare, one of the quietest in the Kerton stable, where none were very steady.  The fences were nothing at first; at last we came to a brook.  It was not broad, but evidently deep, with high, rotten banks.  However, as we were going at a fair hunting pace, all, including Bella Donna and her mistress, took it in their stride, but pulled up at once, seeing that Bruce was left behind, with the groom who was following us.

The first time he came at it, it was a clear case of “craning.”  He was hauling nervously at the reins, and would not let the mare have it.

Guy regarded him with intense contempt.  “By G—­d,” he muttered, “I believe the man’s afraid!”

Forrester laughed so unrestrainedly that Isabel looked at him beseechingly, in evident dread of the consequences.

“My dear Miss Raymond,” he said, answering her frightened glance, “don’t alarm yourself.  Do you think I am a Quixote, to war with windmills?”

No one could look at Bruce’s long arms and legs, all working at once, without owning the aptness of the simile.

For the third time he came down at the brook, and, I really believe, meant going; but Kathleen, unused to such vacillating measures, had got sulky, and swerved on the very brink, almost sliding over it.  Her rider lost his seat, rolled over her shoulder, and for an instant disappeared in the water.

Achelous or Tiber, emerging from his native waves, crowned with aquatic plants, presented, I doubt not, an appearance at once dignified and becoming, but I defy any ordinary non-amphibious mortal to look, under similar circumstances, any thing but supremely ridiculous.  The wrathful face framed in dripping hair and plastered whiskers—­the movements of the limbs, awkward and constrained—­the rivulets distilling from every salient angle, turning the victim into a walking Lauterbrunnen—­when we saw all these absurdities exaggerated before us, no wonder that from the whole party, including the groom, there broke “unnumbered laughters.”

“Curse the mare!” Bruce hissed out.  The words came crushed and broken, as it were, through the white ranges of his grinding teeth.

Livingstone’s face hardened directly.  “Swear as much as you think the circumstances require, or as my cousin will allow,” he said, “but be just before you’re generous:  don’t anathematize Kathleen.  It was no fault of hers.  I never saw her refuse before; but she is used to be put straight at her fences.  Hold her still, Harry” (to the groom on the farther side, who had caught the mare’s rein); “I’ll ride her at it myself.”