“Got wings, she have.”

“Look-a-there!”

But the girl did not desert her first master.  She would sit on a table in the saddle-room, swinging her legs, and shaking her fair locks as she listened bright-eyed while Monkey, busy on leather with soap and sponge, told again the familiar story of Cannibal’s National.

It was on her ninth birthday that, at the conclusion of the oft-told tale, she put a solemn question: 

“Monkey Brand!”

“Yes, Minie.”

“Do-you-think-I-could-win-with-the National?”

“No sayin’ but you might, Min.”

The child’s eyes became steel.  She set her lips, and nodded her flaxen head with fierce determination.

She never recurred to the matter, or mentioned it to others.  But from that time forth to ride the National winner became her secret ambition, dwelt upon by day, dreamed over by night, her constant companion in the saddle, nursed secretly in the heart of her heart, and growing always as she grew.

Certainly she was a Centaur if ever child was.

To the girl indeed her pony was like a dog.  She groomed him, fed him, took him to be shod, and scampered over the wide-strewn Downs on him, sometimes bare-backed, sometimes on a numnah, hopping on and off him light as a bird and active as a kitten.

Mrs. Woodburn let the child go largely her own way.

“Plenty of liberty to enjoy themselves——­” that was the principle she had found successful in the stockyard and the gardens, and she tried it on Boy without a tremor.

Old Joe Longstaffe on his death-bed confirmed the faith of his daughter in this matter of the education or non-education of the child.

“Don’t meddle,” he had said, “God’ll grow in her—­if you’ll let him.”

Patience Woodburn never forgot her father’s words and never had cause to regret that she had followed them.

The girl, wayward though she might be at times, never gave her mother a moment’s real anxiety.  She was straight as a dart, strong as a young hawk, fearless as a lion, and free as the wind.  Her simplicity, her purity and strength made people afraid of her.  In a crowd they always made way for her:  for she was resolute with the almost ruthless resolution of one whose purpose is sure and conscience clean.

“You feel,” Mr. Haggard once said, “that—­she’s clear.”  He waved vaguely.

“Pity she’s a little heathen,” said Mrs. Haggard acridly.

“She doesn’t know her catechism,” answered the mild vicar in his exasperatingly mild way.  “Is she any the worse?”

“Churchman!” snorted his outraged spouse.

Mrs. Haggard’s indictment was unfounded.  The girl was fierce and swift, but she was not a heathen.  Mrs. Woodburn had seen to that.  Sometimes she used to take the child to the Children’s Services in the little old church on the edge of the Paddock Close.  The girl enjoyed the services, and she loved Mr. Haggard; but when, during her grand-dad’s lifetime, her mother gave the child her choice between the church and the little God-First chapel on the way to Lewes, she always chose the latter.