“Is your foot clear of the stirrup?” he inquired, hastily. Perceiving that it was so, he continued, “Let go the rein, then, and trust yourself entirely to me.” As he spoke, the groom came up, and catching the bridle of the plunging horse, led it away; while Mr. Hazlehurst, descending from his saddle with a greater degree of celerity than might have been expected from a man of his age and stoutness, received his daughter in his arms, and lifted her to the ground;--for which feat of agility, Harry, who was by no means impatient to be relieved of his lovely burthen, mentally anathematised him. Then ensued a great confusion of tongues; Mr. Hazlehurst, being himself chiefly to blame, evinced his penitence by accusing everybody else, especially the groom--an old favourite retainer, who held and expressed a strong ungrammatical and illogical opinion, diametrically opposed to his master’s, on all subjects, divine, moral, and physical. At length, in utter despair of attaining any practical result, Harry, muttering to himself his surprise that people would not adopt his system, and strike out for themselves a quiet way of doing things, coolly took the matter into his own hands, by shifting Alice’s saddle to the back of the cob; when he had completed this arrangement, and assisted the young lady to mount, he politely held Sir Lancelot’s stirrup for the accommodation of Mr. Hazlehurst, observing-- “He will carry you just as quietly and easily as your own horse, sir; he is a hand or two higher, certainly; but if you _should_ take a sudden fancy to leap the next stiff fence you come to, he’ll carry you over it like a bird; so you must set the good against the evil.” “You’re very kind, sir. Ugh! what a height the brute is!”--(these words accompanied the effort of literally _climbing_ to the saddle)--“But--but--I’ve dropped my pocket-handkerchief--thank-you. What are you going to ride yourself?” “I am going, if you have no objection, to find out why Mr. Crane’s purchase dislikes to pass that wheelbarrow, and to convince him that there exists a strong necessity for his so doing,” returned Harry, with his head under the flap of a saddle--he being engaged in securing with his own hands the girt around Alice’s discarded steed, despite sundry futile attempts at kicking and biting instituted by that unamiable quadruped. “Oh, Mr. Coverdale--please--pray do not attempt it!” exclaimed Alice, eagerly; “I’m sure the creature is vicious! you will be thrown and hurt, to a certainty!” Harry, thus apostrophised, emerged from beneath the saddle-flap, and tossing back his dishevelled hair, and replacing his hat, which for the greater convenience of strenuous buckling he had taken off, crossed over to Alice’s side.