She turned her head and raised her eyes gratefully to Forrest; and
Graham watched them look into each other's eyes for a long half-minute.
Forrest's pleasure in his wife's pleasure, in her young enthusiasm and
joy of life, was clear to Graham's observation. "Lucky devil," was
Graham's thought, not because of his host's vast ranch and the success
and achievement of it, but because of the possession of a wonder-woman
who could look unabashed and appreciative into his eyes as the Little
Lady had looked.
Graham was meditating, with skepticism, Ernestine's information that
Paula Forrest was thirty-eight, when she turned to the colts and
pointed her riding whip at a black yearling nibbling at the spring
green.
"Look at that level rump, Dick," she said, "and those trotting feet and
pasterns." And, to Graham: "Rather different from Nymph's long wrists,
aren't they? But they're just what I was after." She laughed a little,
with just a shade of annoyance. "The dam was a bright sorrel--almost
like a fresh-minted twenty-dollar piece--and I did so want a pair out
of her, of the same color, for my own trap. Well, I can't say that I
exactly got them, although I bred her to a splendid, sorrel trotting
horse. And this is my reward, this black--and, wait till we get to the
brood mares and you'll see the other, a full brother and mahogany
brown. I'm so disappointed."
She singled out a pair of dark bays, feeding together: "Those are two
of Guy Dillon's get--brother, you know, to Lou Dillon. They're out of
different mares, not quite the same bay, but aren't they splendidly
matched? And they both have Guy Dillon's coat."
She moved her subdued steed on, skirting the flank of the herd quietly
in order not to alarm it; but a number of colts took flight.
"Look at them!" she cried. "Five, there, are hackneys. Look at the lift
of their fore-legs as they run."
"I'll be terribly disappointed if you don't get a prize-winning
four-in-hand out of them," Dick praised, and brought again the flash of
grateful eyes that hurt Graham as he noted it.
"Two are out of heavier mares--see that one in the middle and the one
on the far left--and there's the other three to pick from for the
leaders. Same sire, five different dams, and a matched and balanced
four, out of five choices, all in the same season, is a stroke of luck,
isn't it?"
She turned quickly to Mr. Hennessy: "I can begin to see the ones that
will have to sell for polo ponies--among the two-year-olds. You can
pick them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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