“Like enough,” says Jim. “More than one we could pick began lower down than him, and sits on the Bench and gives coves like us a turn when we’re brought up before ‘em. Fancy old George sayin’, ‘Is anything known, constable, of this prisoner’s anterseedents?’ as I heard old Higgler say one day at Bargo.”

“Why do you make fun of these things, Jim, dear?” says Aileen, looking so solemn and mournful like. “Oughtn’t a steady worker to rise in life, and isn’t it sad to see cleverer men and better workers—if they liked—kept down by their own fault?”

“Why wasn’t your roan mare born black or chestnut?” says Jim, laughing, and pretending to touch her up. “Come along, and let’s see if she can trot as well as she used to do?”

“Poor Lowan,” says she, patting the mare’s smooth neck (she was a wonderful neat, well-bred, dark roan, with black points—one of dad’s perhaps, that he’d brought her home one time he was in special good humour about something. Where she was bred or how, nobody ever knew); “she was born pretty and good. How little trouble her life gives her. It’s a pity we can’t all say as much, or have as little on our minds.”

“Whose fault’s that?” says Jim. “The dingo must live as well as the collie or the sheep either. One’s been made just the same as the other. I’ve often watched a dingo turn round twice, and then pitch himself down in the long grass like as if he was dead. He’s not a bad sort, old dingo, and has a good time of it as long as it lasts.”

“Yes, till he’s trapped or shot or poisoned some day, which he always is,” said Aileen bitterly. “I wonder any man should be content with a wicked life and a shameful death.” And she struck Lowan with a switch, and spun down the slope of the hill between the trees like a forester-doe with the hunter-hound behind her.

When we came up with her she was all right again, and tried to smile. Whatever put her out for the time she always worked things by kindness, and would lead us straight if she could. Driven, she knew we couldn’t be; and I believe she did us about ten times as much good that way as if she had scolded and raged, or even sneered at us.

When we rode up to Mr. Storefield’s farm we were quite agreeable and pleasant again, Jim makin’ believe his horse could walk fastest, and saying that her mare’s pace was only a double shuffle of an amble like Bilbah’s, and she declaring that the mare’s was a true walk—and so it was. The mare could do pretty well everything but talk, and all her paces were first-class.