TRUE GAZES UPON MISTRESS LLOYD, OF MARYLAND.
The following day, laughter and talk outside the stable announced
that several persons had come to visit the horses.
It chanced that among them was that brilliant quartette of men, known
as the “Hartford Wits,” with Master Trumbull at their head.
The latter stood chatting with a mere slip of a girl, dark-eyed and
merry. In her hand she carried a fine, thread-lace kerchief--like
gossamer films at dawn--and a pouf of gauze fell away from her
snowy throat. She wore a perriot of flowered taffeta trimmed with
herrisons, and from beneath her petticoat two little slippered feet
peeped shyly. She was the most radiant being True had ever seen.
Enraptured, he followed her with his eyes whichever way she turned.
For all her beauty, she was yet strong and fine in her promise
of fuller womanhood. There was a quick certainty about her every
movement, and a steadiness of eye that showed no indeterminate
character.
Near her stood a Coxcomb, filling the air with odors of musk and
powders, offensive to the nostrils of the little horse who was led
past him. A secret loathing for this popinjay was born in his heart
which he never outgrew.
“Ah, Mistress Lloyd,” said the Coxcomb, drawling his words
disagreeably, and waving a scented lace-bordered handkerchief, “what
say you to Beautiful Bay? Have your kinsmen, Carroll of Carrollton,
or the Hon. Edward Lloyd--or, for the matter of that, the dashing
Tom Dulaney--anything finer at their country-seats in Maryland? Is
there anything in Virginia, or South Carolina, to compare with our
Beautiful Bay?”
Smiling, the maid stepped in front of Beautiful Bay and held out a
slender pink palm--like the petals of wild roses True had seen on
his way from Springfield--on it lay a bit of maple sugar, and right
proudly the old horse arched his neck and ate from her hand, picking
up the crumbs with his firm but flexible lips, that his hard teeth
might not scar the tender flesh.
With her dainty kerchief she flicked his side lightly, replying
evasively:
“We’ve nothing _better groomed_.” Turning to her father she cried
gaily, “Come hither, Daddy, dear, and touch his satin coat!”
Beautiful Bay pranced a little to show his appreciation.
“Have a care, my child,” warned her father.
Her laughter rippled forth as she drew Beautiful Bay’s muzzle down
for a caress.
“It would not bite a maiden’s cheek, would it?” she cooed in his
ready ear, and he trembled with joy at the sound. Young Mistress
Lloyd’s “way with horses” was known from Maryland to Boston.
The Coxcomb flicked his riding boot impatiently with his whip. This
annoyed Beautiful Bay, who, thinking to please the maid, turned
abruptly to him and bared his teeth, flattening his ears.
The popinjay sprang to one side.
“He can’t abide smells!” explained the hostler, apologetically, as he
led the old horse back into his stable.
And this was the first time that True saw Mistress Lloyd, of
Maryland; though she had taken no notice of him, he never forgot it.
Deeply attached did the two horses become to each other, and Old
Worldly-Wise taught Young Innocence much that was afterwards of
use to him. He told him of the city, where men sat, far into the
night, and played cards or other games by the glare of torchlight or
wax candle; of how they danced with or serenaded fair ladies till
cock-crow. It contrasted strangely with True’s former quiet nights
and peaceful days in the Valley of the Connecticut, but it interested
him intensely and awakened longings within him.
He marvelled to see Beautiful Bay active and spirited enough at his
age to clear a five-barred gate like a greyhound, and to see his
bearing under the saddle alike youthful and stylish.
The old horse had a fund of anecdotes to impart about the Desert and
its traditions.
“Arabs,” he said, “think it wicked to change their coursers into
beasts of burden and tillage. Why did Allah make the ox for the
plough and the camel to transport merchandise, if not that the horse
was for the race?”
True had no answer ready, so Beautiful Bay continued:
“If you meet one of the Faithful in the Desert mounted on a
_kochlani_, and he shall say to you, ‘God bless you!’ before you can
say, ‘And God’s blessing be upon you!’ he shall be out of sight.”
True learned how to judge a horse by his color through Arabian
tradition.
“White is for princes, but these do not stand the heat; black brings
good fortune, but fears rocky ground; chestnut is most active--if
one tells you he has seen a horse ‘fly in the air,’ and the horse be
chestnut, believe him!”
There was a pause, during which True anxiously waited to hear what
was said of bays.
Finally he asked.
“They say,” answered his father, with a certain natural pride, “that
‘bay is hardiest and best.’ If one tells you he has seen a horse
‘leap to the bottom of a precipice without hurting himself,’ and if
he say ‘bay,’ believe him!”
And being bay, True was happy.
“The Arab,” continued the father, “who lives with his horse, and
prizes him above his family, as is most meet and proper, learns
to know him well. There are those in the Desert to-day who claim
to trace the lineage of their horses back to those of Mohammed.
These they train to endure hunger, fatigue and thirst to stand the
Desert life. Some are said to be able to travel eighty leagues in
twenty-four hours.”
There were modern incidents in Beautiful Bay’s lore--tales of the
Southern States--so lately colonies--told him by his famous father,
Traveller, who was imported from England and owned by Colonel Tayloe
of Virginia.
“The blood of a thoroughbred flows quicker on the course than on a
hill-side farm,” said the old horse, and related a story of the meet
at Annapolis, when he and Colonel De Lancey went down from New York
to visit The Dulaney of Maryland.
Discussing the merits of the horses stood a group of the famous
horsemen of the day: Tom Lee, of Virginia; Mason, of Gunstan Hall,
and De Lancey, of New York--when The Dulaney joined them.
“’Sdeath, De Lancey!” he cried, in his hearty voice, “and right glad
am I to see you here. These spindling bets of fifty or a hundred
pounds please me not. I want gold, man, gold, I say!” Laughing
carelessly, he flicked a speck of dust from his coat sleeve with a
white linen handkerchief.
“Gold? Egad, so do I!” answered the rollicking De Lancey. “What say
you to a _peck_ of gold? Neither do I deal in quarters and halves.”
“Make it a struck _bushel_ of Spanish dollars, and I will back my
horse against yours or the field!” cried the Southerner.
The bet made was perhaps the most sensational money-bet ever made on
the Annapolis course.
Deafening cheers rent the air as The Dulaney’s horse finished the
one-mile circle a nose ahead.
[Illustration:
From Linsley’s “Morgan Horses”
JUSTIN MORGAN.
“THOU SHALT BE TO MAN A SOURCE OF HAPPINESS AND WEALTH.”--MAHOMET]