Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/87

 ‘There he goes!’ exclaimed Lesbia, raising herself in her stirrups and pointing with her crop.

‘Right you are. Yoi over—yoi over—over—over—over—over!’

‘Can’t go on like this, I should think; he must break soon, said a farmer in grey coat, gaiters, and white cords, close by Miss Blemmyketts.

‘Poor creature, I hope not!’ she exclaimed in a disappointed tone. ‘Guess he’d hardly carry his tail so sprightly if he were going to break.’

This was too much for the politeness of her hearers, and laughter exploded on all sides. But the next moment there came the voice of the first whip from the end of the wood.

‘Tally-ho, gone away! Gone away — away —away — away!’

Bridles shortened up, hats jammed on heads, heels dug into horses’ flanks, a thundering, floundering, splashing, dashing, helter-skelter rush down the long ride after the tooting horn, not a few knees bruised in crowding out of the hand-gate—in this fashion, the open field was reached, the pack streaming over it in full chorus. Our two novices had a good place, but they had not got away scatheless. Miss Blemmyketts had her right eye closed by a huge clot of wet mud, kicked up from the quagmire by the horse next in front of her, and with difficulty she cleared her sight by hastily smearing the mud down over her cheek. Lesbia had a worse mishap; her mare stumbled in one of the deep grips of the ride, and as the girl was not prepared, she was thrown so much forward over the pommel that her face met the mare’s head as she jerked it up in recovering, thereby giving her rider a nasty blow on the mouth, as well as making her nose bleed. Thus, the one with her face half masked by dirt, the other with blood trickling over her chin,