"Well," she said, looking down at the steaming horse, "I had to get here."
"You had to get here?" I echoed. "Goodness alive! Nobody but a girl would run a horse into the thumps to get anywhere."
"Stupid," she said, "I 've just had to get here,—there, I did n't mean that. I meant I had to get where I was going."
"You were in a terrible hurry a moment ago," said I.
"The horse had to rest," she pouted.
"You might have thought of that," I said, "a little earlier in your seven miles' run." Then I laughed. The idea of resting the horse was so delicious that Ump and Jud laughed too.
The horse's knees were trembling and his sides puffing like a bellows. Here was Brown Rupert, the fastest horse in the Carper stable, a horse that Cynthia guarded as a man might guard the ball of his eye, run literally off his legs by this devil-may-care youngster. I would have wagered my saddle against a sheepskin that she had started Brown Rupert on the jump from the horse-block and held him to
