In real trouble, especially when the trouble was concerned with those she loved best, she walked boldly; no one faced the large sorrows and bereavements that fell to her destiny with a more courageous front. The magnitude called forth the faith which unwaveringly supported her, but when all seemed peaceful and prosperous, she was often a prey to acute imaginative apprehensions. She could not bear, for instance, to see us all start out riding together, and when the announcement came that the half-dozen of riding horses were at the front door, she went back to her room on the other side of the house. Certainly she had some slight basis for her feelings, for among those steeds there was a bad bucker and a rearer. None of the riders minded that in the slightest, and away went the cavalcade at a violent gallop up the long slope of turf in front of the house with “Braemar” in the shape of a comma, and “Quentin” playing the piano in the air with his forelegs, and “Ajax” kicking up behind, and “Peggy” going sideways, just because my father had mounted first and smacked “Columba” over the rump while the rest of us were betwixt and between the gravel and the saddle. There were hurdles stuck up on the slope, and Braemer, shrilly squealing, bucked over the first and Ajax ran out, and Peggy trod solemnly on the top of one, and Quentin still hopping on his hind legs refused and was whacked, and my father went pounding on ahead as we rocketed after him. He was not a good horseman, but he had no knowledge of fear, and, though he avoided the hurdles, he went tobogganing down the steep sides of Croham Hurst with Columba slipping and sliding on the pebbles and putting her foot into rabbit holes, while her rider with slack rein enjoyed it all enormously. In the meantime my mother had dreadful visions of two or three of us being brought back on hurdles, and carried into the house. But exactly at that point her essential courage knocked her nervousness on the head, for she would not at any price have had any one of us not go out riding. Only, she didn’t want to see the start.