‘Perhaps that would be best,’ said Bella. ‘Mr. Piper is so nervous about my riding. Certainly, Erebus is a most lovely creature. He must be very cheap for a hundred pounds.’ ‘Well, yes,’ said the captain, smiling, ‘he may fairly be called a bargain--at that price.’ CHAPTER XVII. VANESSA’S VISIT. EREBUS was in due course shown to Mr. Piper, who knew so little about horses as to be scarcely worthy to be called a Yorkshireman. His own particular vanity in the way of horse-flesh was a fast pony that could trot between the shafts of a light carriage for any number of hours without rest or refreshment. Anything beyond that was out of his line. He contemplated the black with a cool survey, and thought that there was very little of him for the money. ‘Isn’t he lovely?’ asked Bella, patting the creature’s sleek neck. Erebus was of a heavenly temper in his stable. It was only when conscious of humanity on his back that he was subject to fits of waywardness. ‘Well, he aren’t bad-looking,’ assented the unenthusiastic Piper; ‘but if I’d chose a horse for you I should have picked one with more timber and a better back for the saddle. I hope he’s quiet.’ ‘Oh, he’s everything that’s nice,’ answered Bella, with a fluttering of her heart at the recollection of some of Erebus’s manœuvres that morning. ‘I shall feel as easy on him as in an arm-chair--when I get used to him.’ ‘And Captain Standish gave you a riding lesson, did he?’ inquired Mr. Piper. ‘Yes, he went over the moor with me, just to show me how to manage Erebus.’ ‘That was very civil of him. But you mustn’t be riding about with him often, you know, Bella. It wouldn’t do. You mean no harm, and he means no harm. I know that, my dear. But it would set people talking--and I’m as proud a man as Cæsar in my way. I won’t have my wife talked about.’ Bella buried her pale face in the black’s silky mane. She did not care to meet her husband’s honest eyes just at this particular moment. ‘I would not for the world do anything you dislike,’ she said, meekly; ‘but I want to learn how to manage Erebus, and I don’t think any one could teach me so well as Captain Standish. And, by and by, when the foxhunting begins, if you did not mind, I should like very much to--to----’ Here Mr. Piper glared at her with a look so awful that she remodelled the end of her sentence--’ to see the hounds throw off.’ ‘You could drive to the meet in your pony chay,’ said Mr. Piper. ‘Nobody could say there was harm in that.’ ‘It would be much nicer to go on horseback,’ pleaded Bella, laying her little white hand caressingly on Mr. Piper’s velvet collar. ‘Why, what a baby you are, little woman!’ he exclaimed, mollified by that light touch, and the coaxing look in the Dresden china face. ‘Yon horse is a new toy. You’ll be wanting to ride him into the drawing-room, I shouldn’t wonder, or to have him lying on the hearth-rug of a winter evening, like a Newfoundland.’