To comfort me she used to say—for she knew my love of blooded stock: "She is beautiful, Jack, well built and coupled just right in the back. One link more of vertebræ would have spoiled her, turned her up too sloping between the shoulders, and made her gangling in the hips. If there’s too many links in a filly’s back, when the pinch of contest comes, you know, Jack, as well as I do, there will be a crumpling—and it is generally in their legs. And Eloise’s, Jack—well, you should see it—thoroughbred—taut as a bow string—holding hip and head together. And not too short, either, Jack; the little dicky, short-backed ones, with schooner hips, are a sure sign of several vertebræ being lost by sitting on them for too many generations at the loom or the wheel, or carrying home the week’s washing on their heads! It’s the scrub sign, my boy. And Eloise is clean-limbed with good flat bones. Jack, as you love me and your God, never marry a woman that can’t span her ankle with her thumb and forefinger—that kind of a fetlock is a scrub of the most pronounced type! It came from ancestors before them for a thousand years, who had all their weight on their ankles—just hauling plows like beasts of burden. And Eloise has great style with a fine sweep and action. Look how boldly she steps and clean and true! No loblolling, lazy ambling there—hitting even on the ground—and her hair, Jack—red-chestnut—it is beautiful and not too much. Shun the brood-mare with mane thick and heavy. It is pretty but comes from the scrub Shetlands or Andalusian jennets. Look—look, Jack—isn’t she beautiful?" I watched her myself, tall, her scornful, daring head thrown back, her fine braids of sorrel, silken hair flying out, as in a long-limbed, leaping sweep, she chased the collie across the yard. The comparison was fitting—as a thoroughbred, Eloise was superb. My Aunt had copied it all by herself, tabulating for me, most elaborately and artistically, on a great sheet of parchment, Eloise’s pedigree. It was such a tabulation as I had seen her work over night after night, often for months, handing down volume after volume of the English and Bruce’s Stud Book and the Trotting and Pacing Register. In bold, block, decorated letters, she gradually evolved Eloise’s sire and dam, as she grimly called them, and thence on to granddams and g. g. dams (every g. as I learned standing for another generation) until it looked, when finished, like a great river, with a hundred branching streams flowing in, and an endless row of g. g. g. g. g.’s Under each sire and dam, and in red ink, in contrast to the black of their names, she had written their records, short and pointed, and often with astonishing frankness. I remember that under her grandsire—a Governor of Virginia—the red ink ran: _Died of a wetting, while drunk at a horse race! Watch your children for too much crude liquor!_