“Far from it, sir,” said he. “Far from it. Bones isn’t broke so easy as gentlemen think. Ask your pardon, sir; now how was it as _your_ accident came about? Collar-bone, sir, warn’t it? Well, sir, it wasn’t a _young_ horse as let you down that way, I’ll take upon me to—” swear, he was going to say, but, looking respectfully at Miss Lushington, Tips put his broad hand over his mouth, and rounded off his sentence with the word “suppose.” I was forced to confess that the culprit Apple-Jack was by no means a young horse. In fact, he “owned” to ten; and, like seven-and-twenty in a woman, that is an age at which a horse remains for an indefinite period. “That’s where it is, sir,” answered Tips. “Now, a young one will spoil your face sometimes, and strain you in the groin, and kick at you when you’re down; and I’ve even known of ’em breaking of a man’s ribs. But a collar-bone?—no. If you’ll excuse _me_, sir, I’ll tell you the reason why. When a man breaks his collar-bone, ’tis because him and his horse comes to the ground all of a heap; and a young one never falls all of a heap without he’s blown, and then he seldom gets to the far side of his fence at all.” “You’ve ridden a good many young ones?” I asked, not without some little admiration of a man who seemed to consider an inexperienced horse the _safest_ mount. “Here and there a one, sir,” replied Tips, looking modestly downwards. “My old master, he bred a good sort; you don’t see many such nowadays. And I mostly had the schoolin’ of ’em, both with Sir ’Arry and the Squire. Bless ye, sir, the young ones isn’t the most troublesome as we have to do with. A young horse is very _teachable_, as I call it; and the sooner you get him, the easier it is to show him what you mean. A little timorsome perhaps they are at first, and frightened at what they’re about. I’ve seen the same with the women-folk.—[Here Miss Lushington coughed loudly, and frowned.]—But when they _do_ go, they _mean_ going, and no mistake.—[“Well, I’m sure!” said Miss L., gathering up her work, and preparing to draw some beer.]—I’d as leave ride a four-year-old, if he could have the _condition_ in him, as a fourteen. If things don’t go cross with him at first, to my thinking, he’s the pleasanter mount of the two.” “But you don’t mean to say a young horse can jump as well as an old one!” I exclaimed, completely aghast at such an upsetting of all my preconceived notions; and recollecting, not without a qualm, how my banker’s book might testify to the value I placed on seasoned and experienced hunters. “Suppose you come to ‘doubles’! Suppose you come to timber! Suppose you want to creep quietly through a gap by a tree!”