Chapter 28

Ragamuffin

The little affair of Joses was one of the many trifles that made for intimacy between the young man and the girl.

In spite of herself Boy found her opposition dying away. Indeed, she could no more resist him than she could resist the elements. She might put her umbrella up, but that did not stop the rain. And if the rain chose to go on long enough, the umbrella would wear away. The choice lay with the rain and not with the umbrella.

By the autumn Boy had ceased even to pretend to be unfriendly. It was no use, and she was never much good at pretending.

Then with the fall of the leaves old Ragamuffin began to tumble to pieces.

She watched him closely for a week. Then one October dawn, the mists hanging white in the hollows, she led him out to the edge of the wood before the lads were about. Only Monkey Brand accompanied her.

Herself she held the old pony alongside the new-dug grave, talking to him, stroking his nose. Monkey Brand, of the steady hand and loving heart, did the rest. A quarter of an hour later the girl and the little jockey came back to the yard alone. She was carrying a halter in her hand and talking of Four-Pound-the-Second.

The lads watched her surreptitiously and with brimming eyes. Albert, who prided himself on the hardness of his heart, wept and swore he hadn't.

"I'll lay she feels it," blubbered Stanley, who was not clever enough to conceal his tears.

* * * * *

When Silver came down for the week-end, Old Mat told him what had happened.

"That's the strength in her," he whispered. "Just took and did it, she and Monkey Brand. Never a word to her mother or me--before or since."

But the young man noticed that the girl looked haggard, wistful, more spiritual than usual. He was shy of her, and she of him.

When that evening she met him in the yard and said, "Will you come and see?" he was amazed and touched.

They stood together by the new-made grave under the wood. Jim was far more moved than when his mother died.

"Dear old Ragamuffin!" he said.

She seemed to quaver in the dusk.

"You mustn't," she said, in strained and muffled voice, and for a moment laid a finger on his arm.

Next day, as they were making their Sunday round of the horses together, Silver stopped at Heart of Oak's box.

"I don't quite know what to be at with this poor old cormorant," he said, slow and cogitating. "I'm looking for a home for him. But there are no bidders. A bit too good a doer, I guess. Eat 'em out of hearth and home."

The girl's eyes flashed on his face and away again.

"He's not old," she said, as her hand stroked the pony's neck.

"Well, he's like me," the young man replied. "He's older than he was."

Boy made a cursory inspection of the pony's mouth.

"Eleven off," she said.

"That's too old to play polo."

She believed it to be a lie, but she did not think she was sufficient an authority on the game to justify her in saying so.

"Anyway, I'm getting too heavy for him," Silver went on. "Joint too big for the dish, as they say. That fellow's more my sort, ain't you, old lad?" He nodded to the next loose-box, where his seventeen-hand hunter, Banjo, stood, blowing at them through the bars. "What Heart of Oak wants is a nice light weight just to hack him about the Downs and ease him down into the grave."

That evening after supper Jim Silver sang.

Apart from the members of the Eton Mission Clubs there were perhaps a dozen men in the world--Eton men all, boating men most--who knew that he did "perform," to use their expression; and just two women--Boy Woodburn and her mother. Old Mat, to be sure, did not count, for he always slept through the "performance."

The young man's repertoire consisted of two songs--_The Place Where the Old Horse Died_ and _My Old Dutch_.

With a good natural voice, entirely untrained, he sang with a deep and quiet feeling that made his friends affirm that once you had heard Silver Mug's--

_We've been together now for forty years, And it don't seem a day too much, There ain't a lady livin' in the land As I'd swop for my dear old Dutch._

you would never listen to Albert Chevalier again.

That, of course, was the just and admirable exaggeration of youth and friendship.

But it was the fact that always after the young man had sung there was an unusually prolonged silence, and, as Amersham once said, you felt as if you were in church.

This evening, after he had finished, and Mrs. Woodburn had broken the silence with her quiet "Thank you," the young man returned to the subject he had broached in the stable.

Silver indeed was nothing if not dogged, as the girl was beginning to find out.

"I say, Miss Woodburn," he began in that casual way of his, "I wish you'd take charge of that old yellow moke o' mine."

Boy shook her head.

He laughed and drew his chair beside her as she worked. Not seldom now he doffed the Puritan with her, and became easy, chaffing, almost gallant. Amersham and his friends would have been amazed had they seen their sober Jim Silver so much at home with a lady.

"Oh, I say--why not?" he protested, boyish and chaffing.

"He's too much of a handful for me," said the girl gravely, threading her needle against the light.

He laughed, delighted, smacking his knee as he did when pleased, while even Ma, who of wont turned a deaf ear on the young couple, smiled sedately.

"I like that!" cried Silver. "Ha! ha! ho! ho! That's a good un." Then he turned grave, almost lugubrious. "But of course if you won't have him I must do something to him. I'm too fond of the old fellow to let him rot."

Next morning, before he left for London, Boy saw him from her window holding intimate communion with Monkey Brand in the Paddock Close beside the wood.

When he had driven away, the girl descended from her eyrie and cross-examined the little jockey sharply.

Monkey looked secretive and mysterious even for him.

"He's a very queer gentleman," was all he would say. "One o' them that's been to India without their 'ats, I should say. You know, Miss?" He tapped his forehead. "Melted a-top."

"What did he _say_?" persisted the girl.

"He said nobody was to exercise Heart of Oak only unless you wanted him. And he said he'd make up his mind next week."

"Make up his mind?"

"That was the word, Miss."

"Bring me the gun," ordered Boy.

The little man obeyed sulkily.

"It'll be in my room," she said. "And it'll stay there."

"Very good, Miss," replied the jockey, and winked to himself as the girl ascended the ladder.

That evening, as Old Mat slept noisily by the fire with open mouth, the two women worked.

Mrs. Woodburn every now and then lifted her eyes to her daughter's face and let them dwell there, as the sky dwells on a tree.

"D'you like him, Boy?" she asked at length, tranquilly.

The girl for once was taken by surprise. She flushed a little and perhaps for the first time in her life fenced.

"Who, mother?"

"Mr. Silver."

"Yes," said the girl. "He's like Billy Bluff--only less rowdy."