Page:Son of the wind.djvu/150

RV 138 "Did she tell you that?" he asked.

"Didn't she, though! That, and a lot more!" The long-pent irritation broke forth. "Oh, she gave me her ideas, she didn't leave me a doubt on the matter! Said she would rather see it killed than caught; that breaking horses was not a sensible occupation; that if you tamed a wild horse, you lost it, but if you never went near it you had it for ever."

The scholar, drawn straight up on his knees, with his handkerchief in one hand and a tobacco jar—evidently the object of his searching—in the other, had the air of an astonished suppliant. "I don't understand that," he said slowly.

"Of course you don't! It's the most infernal nonsense! Woman-talk! A horse is no use until it's broken. That's sense, isn't it? Says that it's not, just an instinct that makes you feel that way, a great blind feeling, she calls it. A feeling—pshaw!"

It was evident Carron had one now. He had rushed about the little study at the risk of upsetting chairs and the scholar himself. "Doesn't want to have anything hurt, of course, can't bear to see anything suffer! To hear her talk you'd think the worst thing in the world was to scare a wild animal; and as for hurting it a little—! If she had seen men agonize as I have she wouldn't worry so much about a wild horse!"