"Really, really, Kate, and now let us go and have a look at Joe."
I am ashamed to say how old Joe was. Like ladies, horses don't care to have their ages published on every house-top, and though they cannot lie for themselves on this important point, they have no difficulty in finding many to lie for them.
Joe was said to have been eight when the Lowrys bought him, and they had ridden the gallant brown for seven years. But eight is a queer age in a horse, as expansive and uncertain as the adjective "young" when applied to spinsters. At the lowest computation Joe was not less than fifteen, and a "vet." who wanted to buy him once pledged his professional credit that he was twenty-six at least. Be this as it may, when an hour later he walked out of his loose box, he looked the very type and _beau idéal_ of a twelve-stone hunter. From the carriage of his lean game head and trimly-docked tail, from the cheery snort with which he welcomed the fresh air, from the muscle on his square and massive quarters, from his hard, clean legs and full, bold eye, you might have fancied he was a six-year-old. A veteran strapper who had followed the squire from the Hall to the cottage, had spent an hour in dressing the old horse, and the squire's own hands had put the finishing touches to his toilette. Proud and gay the old rascal looked before his mistress mounted, but when she was in the saddle he gave one wild kick from mere exuberance of spirits and then trotted out of the yard, as old Tim expressed it, "for all the world as if he was tridding on eggs."
"Ye gods! she is a dazzler! Quite takes my breath away," said a shiny-hatted, faultlessly-breeched stranger from Dublin to a young local Nimrod; "why, there are not half-a-dozen girls, even with the Meath, who have ventured out yet in Busvine's scarlet array, and here is a young lady in the wilds of Gonaway with a seat like a sack of potatoes and raiment more magnificent than Solomon in all his glory."
"Fits her well for all that, and suits her style, milk and roses and that sort of thing, you know," replied the local, himself rather a captive to the fair equestrienne.
"Milk and roses! Milk and fiddlestick! Lemon and white I should describe her if she was in the setter class; but tell me, who is she, and has she any money?"