"I'll keep a holt o' the rope, Miss f.a.n.n.y," said Johnny, a.s.siduously fondling his pupil; "it might be she'd be strange in herself for the first offer. I'll lead her on a small piece. Come on, gerr'l! Come on now!"

The pupil, thus adjured, made a hesitating movement, and f.a.n.n.y settled herself down into the saddle. It was the shifting of the weight that seemed to bring home to the grey filly the true facts of the case, and with the discovery she shot straight up into the air as if she had been fired from a mortar. The rope whistled through Johnny Connolly's fingers, and the point of the filly's shoulder laid him out on the ground with the precision of a prize-fighter.

"I felt, my dear," as f.a.n.n.y Fitz remarked in a letter to a friend, "as if I were in something between an earthquake and a bad dream and a churn. I just _clamped_ my legs round the crutches, and she whirled the rest of me round her like the lash of a whip. In one of her flights she nearly went in at the hall door, and I was aware of William O'Loughlin's snow-white face somewhere behind the geraniums in the porch. I think I was clean out of the saddle then. I remember looking up at my knees, and my left foot was nearly on the ground. Then she gave another flourish, and swung me up on top again. I was hanging on to the reins hard; in fact, I think they must have pulled me back on to the saddle, as I _know_ at one time I was sitting in a bunch on the stirrup! Then I heard most heart-rending yells from the poor old Aunts: 'Oh, the begonias! O f.a.n.n.y, get off the gra.s.s!' and then, suddenly, the filly and I were perfectly still, and the house and the trees were spinning round me, black, edged with green and yellow dazzles. Then I discovered that some one had got hold of the cavesson rope and had hauled us in, as if we were salmon; Johnny had grabbed me by the left leg, and was trying to drag me off the filly's back; William O'Loughlin had broken two pots of geraniums, and was praying loudly among the fragments; and Aunt Harriet and Aunt Rachel, who don't to this hour realise that anything unusual had happened, were reproachfully collecting the trampled remnants of the begonias."

It was, perhaps unworthy on f.a.n.n.y Fitz's part to conceal the painful fact that it was that distinguished fisherman, Mr. Rupert Gunning, who had landed her and the Connemara filly. Freddy Alexander, however, heard the story in its integrity, and commented on it with his usual candour.

"I don't know which was the bigger fool, you or Johnny," he said; "I think you ought to be jolly grateful to old Rupert!"

"Well, I'm not!" returned f.a.n.n.y Fitz.

After this episode the training of the filly proceeded with more system and with entire success. Her nerves having been steadied by an hour in the lunge with a sack of oats strapped, Mazeppa-like, on to her back, she was mounted without difficulty, and was thereafter ridden daily. By the time f.a.n.n.y's muscles and joints had recovered from their first attempt at rough-riding, the filly was taking her place as a reasonable member of society, and her nerves, which had been as much _en evidence_ as her bones, were, like the latter, finding their proper level, and becoming clothed with tranquillity and fat. The Dublin Horse Show drew near, and, abetted by Mr. Alexander, f.a.n.n.y Fitz filled the entry forms and drew the necessary cheque, and then fell back in her chair and gazed at the attentive dogs with fateful eyes.

"Dogs!" she said, "if I don't sell the filly I am done for!"

The mother scratched languidly behind her ear till she yawned musically, but said nothing. The daughter, who was an enthusiast, gave a sudden bound on to Miss Fitzroy's lap, and thus it was that the cheque was countersigned with two blots and a paw mark.

None the less, the bank honoured it, being a kind bank, and not desirous to emphasise too abruptly the fact that f.a.n.n.y Fitz was overdrawn.

In spite of, or rather, perhaps, in consequence of this fact, it would have been hard to find a smarter and more prosperous-looking young woman than the owner of No. 548, as she signed her name at the season-ticket turnstile and entered the wide soft aisles of the cathedral of horses at b.a.l.l.sbridge. It was the first day of the show, and in token of f.a.n.n.y Fitz's enthusiasm be it recorded, it was little more than 9.30 A.M.

f.a.n.n.y knew the show well, but hitherto only in its more worldly and social aspects. Never before had she been of the elect who have a horse "up," and as she hurried along, attended by Captain Spicer, at whose house she was staying, and Mr. Alexander, she felt magnificently conscious of the importance of the position.

The filly had preceded her from Craffroe by a couple of days, under the charge of Patsey Crimmeen, lent by Freddy for the occasion.

"I don't expect a prize, you know," f.a.n.n.y had said loftily to Mr.

Gunning, "but she has improved so tremendously, every one says she ought to be an easy mare to sell."

The sun came filtering through the high roof down on to the long rows of stalls, striking electric sparks out of the stirrup-irons and bits, and adding a fresh gloss to the polish that the grooms were giving to their charges. The judging had begun in several of the rings, and every now and then a glittering exemplification of all that horse and groom could be would come with soft thunder up the tan behind f.a.n.n.y and her squires.

"We've come up through the heavy weights," said Captain Spicer; "the twelve-stone horses will look like rats--" He stopped.

They had arrived at the section in which figured "No. 548. Miss F.

Fitzroy's 'Gamble,' grey mare; 4 years, by Grey Dawn," and opposite them was stall No. 548. In it stood the Connemara filly, or rather something that might have been her astral body. A more spectral, deplorable object could hardly be imagined. Her hind quarters had fallen in, her hips were standing out; her ribs were like the bars of a grate; her head, hung low before her, was turned so that one frightened eye scanned the pa.s.sers-by, and she propped her fragile form against the part.i.tion of her stall, as though she were too weak to stand up.

To say that f.a.n.n.y Fitz's face fell is to put it mildly. As she described it to Mrs. Spicer, it fell till it was about an inch wide and five miles long. Captain Spicer was speechless. Freddy alone was equal to demanding of Patsey Crimmeen what had happened to the mare.

"Begor, Masther Freddy, it's a wonder she's alive at all!" replied Patsey, who was now perceived to be looking but little better than the filly. "She was middlin' quiet in the thrain, though she went to lep out o' the box with the first screech the engine give, but I quietened her some way, and it wasn't till we got into the sthreets here that she went mad altogether. Faith, I thought she was into the river with me three times! 'Twas hardly I got her down the quays; and the first o' thim alecthric thrams she seen! Look at me hands, sir! She had me swingin'

on the rope the way ye'd swing a flail. I tell you, Masther Freddy, them was the ecstasies!"

Patsey paused and gazed with a gloomy pride into the stricken faces of his audience.

"An' as for her food," he resumed, "she didn't use a bit, hay, nor oats, nor bran, bad nor good, since she left Johnny Connolly's. No, nor drink.

The divil dang the bit she put in her mouth for two days, first and last. Why wouldn't she eat is it, miss? From the fright sure! She'll do nothing, only standing that way, and bushtin' out sweatin', and watching out all the time the way I wouldn't lave her. I declare to G.o.d I'm heart-scalded with her!"

At this harrowing juncture came the order to No. 548 to go forth to Ring 3 to be judged, and further details were reserved. But f.a.n.n.y Fitz had heard enough.

"Captain Spicer," she said, as the party paced in deepest depression towards Ring 3, "if I hadn't on a new veil I should cry!"

"Well, I haven't," replied Captain Spicer; "shall I do it for you? Upon my soul, I think the occasion demands it!"

"I just want to know one thing," continued Miss Fitzroy. "When does your brother-in-law arrive?"

"Not till to-night."

"That's the only nice thing I've heard to-day," sighed f.a.n.n.y Fitz.

The judging went no better for the grey filly than might have been expected, even though she cheered up a little in the ring, and found herself equal to an invalidish but well-aimed kick at a fellow-compet.i.tor. She was ushered forth with the second batch of the rejected, her spirits sank to their former level, and f.a.n.n.y's accompanied them.

Perhaps the most trying feature of the affair was the reproving sympathy of her friends, a sympathy that was apt to break down into almost irrepressible laughter at the sight of the broken-down skeleton of whose prowess poor f.a.n.n.y Fitz had so incautiously boasted.

"Y' know, my dear child," said one elderly M.F.H., "you had no business to send up an animal without the condition of a wire fence to the Dublin Show. Look at my horses! Fat as b.u.t.ter, every one of 'em!"

"So was mine, but it all melted away in the train," protested f.a.n.n.y Fitz in vain. Those of her friends who had only seen the mare in the catalogue sent dealers to buy her, and those who had seen her in the flesh--or what was left of it--sent amateurs; but all, dealers and the greenest of amateurs alike, entirely declined to think of buying her.

The weather was perfect; every one declared there never was a better show, and f.a.n.n.y Fitz, in her newest and least-paid-for clothes, looked brilliantly successful, and declared to Mr. Rupert Gunning that nothing made a show so interesting as having something up for it. She even encouraged him to his accustomed jibes at her Connemara speculation, and personally conducted him to stall No. 548, and made merry over its melancholy occupant in a way that scandalised Patsey, and convinced Mrs.

Spicer that f.a.n.n.y's pocket was even harder hit than she had feared.

On the second day, however, things looked a little more hopeful.

"She ate her grub last night and this morning middlin' well, miss," said Patsey, "and"--here he looked round stealthily and began to whisper--"when I had her in the ring, exercisin', this morning, there was one that called me in to the rails; like a dealer he was. 'Hi! grey mare!' says he. I went in. 'What's your price?' says he. 'Sixty guineas, sir,' says I. 'Begin at the shillings and leave out the pounds!' says he. He went away then, but I think he's not done with me."

"I'm sure the ring is our best chance, Patsey," said f.a.n.n.y, her voice thrilling with the ardour of conspiracy and of reawakened hope. "She doesn't look so thin when she's moving. I'll go and stand by the rails, and I'll call you in now and then just to make people look at her!"

"Sure I had Masther Freddy doing that to me yestherday," said Patsey; but hope dies hard in an Irishman, and he saddled up with all speed.

For two long burning hours did the Connemara filly circle in Ring 3, and during all that time not once did her owner's ears hear the longed-for summons, "Hi! grey mare!" It seemed to her that every other horse in the ring was called in to the rails, "and she doesn't look so very thin to-day!" said f.a.n.n.y indignantly to Captain Spicer, who, with Mr.

Gunning, had come to take her away for lunch.

"Oh, you'll see, you'll sell her on the last day; she's getting fitter every minute," responded Captain Spicer. "What would you take for her?"

"I'm asking sixty," said f.a.n.n.y dubiously. "What would _you_ take for her, Mr. Gunning--on the last day, you know?"

"I'd take a ticket for her," said Rupert Gunning, "back to Craffroe--if you haven't a return."

The second and third days crawled by unmarked by any incident of cheer, but on the morning of the fourth, when f.a.n.n.y arrived at the stall, she found that Patsey had already gone out to exercise. She hurried to the ring and signalled to him to come to her.

"There's a fella' afther her, miss!" said Patsey, bending very low and whispering at close and tobacco-scented range. "He came last night to buy her; a jock he was, from the Curragh, and he said for me to be in the ring this morning. He's not come yet. He had a straw hat on him."

f.a.n.n.y sat down under the trees and waited for the jockey in the straw hat. All around were preoccupied knots of bargainers, of owners making their final arrangements, of would-be-buyers hurrying from ring to ring in search of the paragon that they had now so little time to find. But the man from the Curragh came not. f.a.n.n.y sent the mare in, and sat on under the trees, sunk in depression. It seemed to her she was the only person in the show who had nothing to do, who was not clinking handfuls of money, or smoothing out banknotes, or folding up cheques and interring them in fat and greasy pocket-books. She had never known this aspect of the Horse Show before, and--so much is in the point of view--it seemed to her sordid and detestable. Prize-winners with their coloured rosettes were swaggering about everywhere. Every horse in the show seemed to have got a prize except hers, thought f.a.n.n.y. And not a man in a straw hat came near Ring 3.

She went home to lunch, dead tired. The others were going to see the polo in the park.

"I must go back and sell the mare," said f.a.n.n.y valiantly, "or else take that ticket to Craffroe, Mr. Gunning!"

"Well, we'll come down and pick you up there after the first match, you poor, miserable thing," said Mrs. Spicer, "and I hope you'll find that beast of a horse dead when you get there! You look half dead yourself!"

How sick f.a.n.n.y was of signing her name at that turnstile! The pen was more atrocious every time. How tired her feet were! How sick she was of the whole thing, and how incredibly big a fool she had been! She was almost too tired to know what she was doing, and she had actually walked past stall No. 548 without noticing it, when she heard Patsey's voice calling her.

"Miss f.a.n.n.y! Miss f.a.n.n.y! I have her sold! The mare's sold, miss! See here! I have the money in me pocket!"