Came Bernard Wharton, bronzed by the fierce unshadowed sun of that dread waste where clouds rarely linger or the blessed rains of heaven are known to fall. His last whoo-hoop had been heard in his own county, in the ancestral land. His blue eye was bright, and his smile ready, as though he had known naught but lightsome toil and the sport of his Northamptonshire forefathers.
Ardmillan, Forbes, and Neil Barrington, with all the ‘Benmohr mob,’ as they were familiarly called, were in the vanguard. Neil Barrington possessed one valuable attribute of the horseman, inasmuch as he was ready, like Bob Clarke, to ride anything and at anything. No man had ever seen Neil decline a mount or a fence, however unpromising. But his skill was inferior to his zeal, usually provoking comment from the bystanders.
On one of these occasions, when he had hit a top rail very hard in an amateur steeplechase, an expostulatory friend said, ‘Why don’t you lift your horse, Neil?’
‘Lift, be d——d!’ replied the indignant Neil; ‘I’ve enough to do to stick on.’
However, being muscular, active, and fearless, Neil’s star had hitherto favoured him, so that he was generally well up at the finish.
One needs a staunch horse for ‘cutting out’ work, but the great raking Desborough which Bob Clarke brought with him was surely too good to be knocked about in the Benmohr bogs and volcanic trap ‘rises’ at a muster, while his condition savoured more of the loose-box than the grass paddock. Bob was one of those fortunate individuals that every one everywhere, male and female, gentle and simple, is glad to welcome. So there was no dissentient to the view of duty he had adopted but Mr. Rockley. And though that gentleman stated it as his opinion that Master Bob would have been better at home minding his work if he ever intended to make money, he extended the right hand of fellowship to him, and was as gracious as all the world and distinctly the world’s wife (and probably daughter) was wont to be.
There were those who thought that Christabel Rockley’s eyes glowed with a deeper light after Bob’s coming was announced. But such an occasion would have brightened the girl’s flower-like face even if Bob had been doomed to eat his heart the while in solitude and disappointment on the far Mondarlo Plain.