A slow, dull red mounted to Armour’s face and seemed to put out that curious light in his eyes.
‘Is it far?’ he asked, glancing down over the tree-tops. ‘I’ve never been there.’
‘Why,’ cried Dora, suddenly, ‘you’ve been down!’
‘So you have,’ I confirmed her. ‘Your beast is damaged too.’
‘Oh, it was only a stumble,’ Armour replied; ‘I stuck on all right.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you had better get off now, as you didn’t then, and look at your animal’s near fore. The swelling’s as big as a bun already.’
Again he made me no answer, but looked intently and questioningly at Dora.
‘Get off, Mr. Armour,’ she said, sharply, ‘and lead your horse home. It is not fit to be ridden. Goodbye.’
I have no doubt he did it, but neither of us were inclined to look back to see. We pushed on under the deodars, and I was indulgent to a trot. At the end of it Dora remarked that Mr. Armour naturally could not be expected to know anything about riding, it was very plucky of him to get on a horse at all, among these precipices; and I of course agreed.
Lord Arthur was waiting when we arrived, on his chestnut polo pony, but Dora immediately scratched for the brilliant event in which they were paired. Ronald, she said, was simply cooked with the heat. Ronald had come every yard of the way on his toes and was fit for anything, but Lord Arthur did not insist. There were young ladies in Simla, I am glad to say, who appealed more vividly to his imagination than Dora Harris did, and one of them speedily replaced her, a fresh-coloured young Amazon who was staying at the Chief’s. She wandered about restlessly over the dry turf for a few minutes, and then went and sat down in a corner of the little wooden Grand Stand and sent me for a cup of tea.
‘Won’t you come to the tent?’ I asked a little ruefully, eyeing the distance and the possible collisions between, but she shook her head.
‘I simply couldn’t bear it,’ she said, and I went feeling somehow chastened myself by the cloud that was upon her spirit.
I found her on my return regarding the scene with a more than usually critical eye, and a more than usually turned down lip. Yet it was exactly the scene it always was, and always, probably, will be. I sat down beside her and regarded it also, but more charitably than usual. Perhaps it was rather trivial, just a lot of pretty dresses and excited young men in white riding-breeches doing foolish things on ponies in the shortest possible time, with one little crowd about the Club’s refreshment tent and another about the Staff’s, while the hills sat round in an indifferent circle; but it appealed to me with a kind of family feeling that afternoon, and inspired me with tolerance, even benevolence.