“Can you drive a horse, Minerva?” said she.
“I kin sit in the wagon and hold the reins.”
“Well, I guess that’s all that’s necessary, but I can’t even do that. You’ll have to take me down to get the men who are expected.”
“We must go at once and get Mr. Casey’s horse.”
I must explain that Ethel knew that “th’ ould scut” had had the blind staggers the day before and that Pat had explained that he could not have two attacks the same week, as the blood letting simply rejuvenated him.
So the two set off for Pat’s and found him unhitching his horse.
“Oh, have you just been to town?” said Ethel (as she told me afterwards).
“Sure I have. Can I git y’annything there!”
“Why, I wanted to meet two friends who are coming up. If I’d known you were going down—”
“I’d have waited arl night fer them. Annything to oblige a leddy. Take him though, you. He’s gentle as a kitten. Gentler, because I’ve not spared ’im. He’ll not have the blind staggers. I bled him like a pig yestiddy, an’ he’s fresh as the morning.”
As he talked he harnessed him up again and invited the two to get in and he’d turn him around and start them right.
“What’ll I do if anything happens, Mr. Casey?”
“Oh, of course,” said Ethel. “I read that in a book.”
Minerva went off in an ecstacy of laughter.
“What are you laughing at, Minerva?” asked Ethel.
“I was wonderin’ how you’d get up to his head.”
“Why, Mr. Casey means if he falls down. Don’t you, Mr. Casey?”
“’Deed an’ I do. But he won’t fall down. He’s strarng as a horse an’ gentle as a—as a litter of kittens. He knows it’s a leddy behind him, an’ he’ll have plisant thoughts of you arl the way down. But don’t use the whip. After bleedin’ he’s a bit skitterful.”
We had had the horse several times at a pinch and Ethel knew that he always cautioned against use of the whip, although th’ould scut’s hide was as tough as that famous one “found in the pit where the tanner died.”
“You take the reins, Minerva,” said Ethel.
Minerva took them and pulled them up so tight that she almost yanked the horse into the wagon.
“Oh, he’ll never stumble. A loose rein an’ a kind worrd an’ th’ whip in the socket an’ll he go like the breezes of Ballinasloe. Good bye an’ God bless you.”
And so they started and the horse went along in a leisurely manner as was his wont. Once he strayed off to the roadside to crop the verdant mead and as Minerva pulled on the wrong rein she nearly upset the wagon. But she was quick to learn, and before they had gone a mile Ethel said she drove as if she had been doing it all day.