“Well, let us go into the woods and see if we can’t find something,” she said determinedly; and with her reluctant guides she set off, trudging across the open forest through an interminable vista of gum trees.
After a while one of the girls said, “Hello, there’s Poss!”
Miss Grant looked up, and saw through the trees a large and very frightened bay horse, with a white face. On further inspection, a youth of about eighteen or twenty was noticed on the horse’s back, but he seemed so much a part of the animal that one might easily overlook him at a first glance. The horse had stopped at the sight of them, and was visibly affected with terror.
They advanced slowly, and the animal began snorting and sidling away among the timber, its rider meanwhile urging it forward. Then Emily cried,
“Hello, Poss!” and the horse gave a snort, wheeled round, jumped a huge fallen tree, and fled through the timber like a wild thing, with its rider still apparently glued to its back. In half a second they were out of sight.
“Who is it? and why does he go away?” asked Miss Grant.
“That’s Poss,” said Emily carelessly. “He and Binjie live over at Dunderalligo. He often comes here. They and their father live over there That’s a colt he’s breaking in. He’s very nice. So is Binjie.”
“Well, here he comes again,” said Miss Grant, as the horseman reappeared, riding slowly round them in ever-lessening circles; the colt meanwhile eyeing them with every aspect of intense dislike and hatred, and snorting between whiles like a locomotive.
Emily waited till the rider came fairly close, and said, “Poss, this is Miss Grant.”
The rider blushed, and lifted his hand to his hat. Fatal error! For the hundredth-part of a second the horse seemed to cower under him as if about to sink to the ground, then tucked his head in between his front legs, and his tail in between the hind ones, forming himself into a kind of circle, and began a series of gigantic bounds at the rate of about a hundred to the minute; while in the air above him his rider described a catherine wheel before he came to earth, landing on his head at Miss Grant’s feet. The horse was soon out of sight, making bounds that would have cleared a house if one had been in the way. The rider got up, pulled his hat from over his eyes, brushed some mud off his clothes, and came up to shake hands as if nothing had happened; his motto apparently being _toujours la politesse_.