"As if she were so surprised--and hadn't done it all of a purpose," they explained to each other.
Deirdre quickly outgrew the dresses that Mrs. Cameron had first made for her. The Schoolmaster thought that Davey was growing too. Although Lass was up to the weight of the two, and they ran beside her up the hillsides as often as not, and rode her only one at a time as they grew older, with keen eyes for a fair thing where a horse was concerned, the Schoolmaster bought a little wilding of a white-stockinged chestnut for Deirdre to ride. A stockman had traded the colt for a bottle of rum when his mare foaled at Steve's. She was a fine animal with a strain of Arab in her, and when the Schoolmaster had mouthed and gentled White Socks, as Deirdre christened the colt, she straddled him bareback and Davey had his old Lass to himself.
There was nothing for him to do but watch Deirdre as she went off down the track clinging lightly to the little horse whose legs spread out like the wings of a bird. Davey's heart sickened with envy every time Deirdre dashed past him. He urged Lass to the limit of her heavy, clompering gait; but even then she did not keep the chestnut in sight, and all but broke a blood vessel in the attempt. When Davey came up to her, Deirdre was invariably twisted round, waiting for him, brilliant-eyed, a wind-whipped colour in her cheeks, and her hair flying about her.
"You'll break your neck some day, riding like that," he told her, sombrely.
But he was eating his heart out at not having a horse to put against hers, at not being able to send flying the pebbles on the hill tracks as she did. He had asked his father over and over again for a horse of his own, but Donald Cameron would not give him one.
"No, my lad," he said shrewdly. "I'm not going to have you racing horses of mine on these roads with the Schoolmaster's girl--breaking their knees and windin' them. I haven't money to throw away, if the Schoolmaster has. By and by, when you're working with me, you'll have a good steady-going stock horse of y're own--maybe."
Davey's school days were numbered, Mrs. Cameron knew. He was shooting up into a long, straggling youth. His father was talking of breaking him into the work of the place, and Davey was beginning to be restive at school, wanting to do man's work and get a horse of his own.