The Little Lady of the Big House / Маленькая хозяйка большого дома. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“I didn’t have horses when I was a young girl,” Paula said to Graham; “and the fact that I can now not only have them but breed them and mold them to my heart’s desire[230] is always too good to be true. Sometimes I can’t believe it myself, and have to ride out and look them over to make sure.”

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[231],” 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 prizewinning 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.”

“If Mr. Mendenhall doesn’t sell that strawberry roan for a clean fifteen hundred, it’ll be because polo has gone out of fashion,” the veterinary approved, with waxing enthusiasm. “I’ve had my eye on them. That pale sorrel, there. You remember his set-back. Give him an extra year and he’ll – look at his coupling! – watch him turn! – a cow-skin? – he’ll turn on a silver dollar! Give him a year to make up, and he’ll stand a show for the international. Listen to me. I’ve had my faith in him from the beginning. Cut out that Burlingame crowd. When he’s ripe, ship him straight East.”

Paula nodded and listened to Mr. Hennessy’s judgment, her eyes kindling with his in the warmth of the sight of the abounding young life for which she was responsible.

“It always hurts, though,” she confessed to Graham, “selling such beauties to have them knocked out on the field so quickly.”

Her sheer absorption in the animals robbed her speech of any hint of affectation or show – so much so, that Dick was impelled to praise her judgment to Evan.

“I can dig through a whole library of horse practice, and muddle and mull over the Mendelian Law[232] until I’m dizzy, like the clod that I am; but she is the genius. She doesn’t have to study law. She just knows it in some witchlike, intuitional way. All she has to do is size up a bunch of mares with her eyes, and feel them over a little with her hands, and hunt around till she finds the right sires, and get pretty nearly what she wants in the result – except color, eh, Paul?” he teased.