Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/117

Rh She stared at him with an expression that did not take the joke. He tried to smile her down. "What the matter, eh? He ain't as ugly as he's painted." His make-up spread his smile across his face in a mocking and enormous leer. "Could n't you learn to love him?"

"Aw, come off," she said hotly, and, lurching against him, she upset his balance.

He fell from the horse's flank to the cocoa mat.

This fall was a bit that was in the act, but she had given it out of its time; there was no crash of drums to mark it, and the music, instead of quickening for the change in the act, dragged along in the unfinished movement of the amble. Nevertheless, Milly jumped to her feet on the horse's back, untied her sun-bonnet and flung it at Burls—who was limping after her, at a loss how to take up his part again, and bruised and angry. Then, with a jerk at the fastenings that her father had arranged in her Mother Hubbard, she flung off that flimsy wrapper and emerged, the lithe and graceful "Mademoiselle Blanc," in the white silk costume of an acrobat, pirouetting on one foot, poising like a ballet dancer, rising and falling swimmingly to the applause of the house.

But the music and the horse were still moving too slowly. Her father cracked his whip at Prince and cursed under his breath. The conductor of the orchestra, seeing the difficulty, tried to catch up to the act, and threw his musicians into confusion. The "equestrian director" came up frowning to the ring-bank and