“You’ve ridden a good many young ones?” I asked, not without some little admiration of a man who seemed to consider an inexperienced horse the _safest_ mount.
“Here and there a one, sir,” replied Tips, looking modestly downwards. “My old master, he bred a good sort; you don’t see many such nowadays. And I mostly had the schoolin’ of ’em, both with Sir ’Arry and the Squire. Bless ye, sir, the young ones isn’t the most troublesome as we have to do with. A young horse is very _teachable_, as I call it; and the sooner you get him, the easier it is to show him what you mean. A little timorsome perhaps they are at first, and frightened at what they’re about. I’ve seen the same with the women-folk.—[Here Miss Lushington coughed loudly, and frowned.]—But when they _do_ go, they _mean_ going, and no mistake.—[“Well, I’m sure!” said Miss L., gathering up her work, and preparing to draw some beer.]—I’d as leave ride a four-year-old, if he could have the _condition_ in him, as a fourteen. If things don’t go cross with him at first, to my thinking, he’s the pleasanter mount of the two.”
“But you don’t mean to say a young horse can jump as well as an old one!” I exclaimed, completely aghast at such an upsetting of all my preconceived notions; and recollecting, not without a qualm, how my banker’s book might testify to the value I placed on seasoned and experienced hunters. “Suppose you come to ‘doubles’! Suppose you come to timber! Suppose you want to creep quietly through a gap by a tree!”
Tips indulged in a pitying smile. “Have you never had a violent _old_ horse, sir?” said he. “How many nags have you owned that you could trust after half-a-dozen seasons to do a gate to a certainty, or land clear of the second ditch, when they knowed nothing beforehand, or to go by a post in a hurry without jamming of your leg against it? Now a young one _takes notice_, as the women say of their babies.—You’ll excuse _me_, miss.—A young one is all for learning, for doing the best he can to please you—for going your way instead of his own. A young one may put you down quietly once or twice from ignorance, or because you won’t let him alone; and he hasn’t learnt yet to disregard your pulling him about, but he makes it up to you before the day’s over. And if I was a-going to ride for my life to-morrow over a country I’d never seen before, I’d ask for a four-year-old to do it on, if I was quite sure that he was a fast one, a bold one, and with a spice of the devil that he got from the mare that bred him!”