Up to the time of Mrs Besant's illness she used to ride with us regularly when time permitted, but after that she gave it up for a while. I was never very strong, and one day the doctor had said to me, "If you were a rich young lady, I should order you horse exercise," to which my father, who was with me, replied, "She is not a rich young lady, doctor, but we will see what can be done." And my riding, which was purely the outcome of fatherly love and a desire for his daughter's health, has been turned by some people into a sort of crime against Mr Bradlaugh!
My sister cared very little about riding, so after Mrs Besant gave it up I used to go out alone, riding a little mare, Kathleen, which Mrs Besant then kept at livery stables. As Kathleen had several little peculiarities of temper, and I was accustomed to ride quite alone, I used to ride her in Regent's Park in the quiet of the morning. One snowy morning in March she bolted with me, and after a considerable run we fell together just within the Clarence Gate. I was carried insensible to the nearest doctor, and my sister was summoned by a passer-by who recognised me. Mr Bradlaugh had been lecturing in Scotland, and was travelling all night so that he might reach London in time to be in the Appeal Court at half-past ten, where Mrs Besant was appealing against the decision of the Master of the Rolls. When he was near home some one stopped my father's cab, and he came on at once, to find me lying unconscious on the floor of the doctor's parlour. Nothing had been done for me; the doctor could not even say whether any bones were broken; his wife had indeed brought me a cup of tea, but of that I knew nothing. To make up for any lack of attentions to my poor body, they turned their thoughts to my sister's soul, and in the afternoon the doctor's wife wrote to my sister that she would pray to her "Heavenly Father" that "in this great affliction you may be led to know Him as your Saviour and Comforter." If a Freethinker wrote to a Christian who was sick or in trouble that hell was a delusion and heaven a myth, it would justly be considered an outrage, but the zealot has two codes of morality--one for those who differ from him, and another for himself.