Dark Horse by Patience McElwee

Author:Patience McElwee [McElwee, Patience]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jane Badger Books

7

Susannah went in to the show ring on her next outing in a very different frame of mind from her first disastrous experience. To begin with, all her new clothes, from her bowler downwards, had stretched and become more comfortable, and she saw to it that this time her

number was round her arm and not cutting painfully into her middle. She was more used to a double bridle, and the pony was used to her hands. And a few words of praise from Shamus O’Brien had made her impervious to scornful looks and cutting asides from the other competitors. Best of all, her grandmother had come to realise the sense of the old adage about the folly of keeping a dog and barking yourself. She had been content to let Shamus give Susannah her riding orders, and she had not once reminded her grand-daughter that the

pony she was riding had cost four hundred guineas.

Some of the faces in the collecting ring were familiar, but this time the judge was an elderly man who had won Susannah’s heart at the outset by raising his bowler to her when he discovered she was to be one of his victims.

Swedish Rhapsody, too, was more at her ease. In order to accustom her to the music she had seemed to resent on her first appearance, the children had taken a gramophone up to the stables, and if on this occasion she was not likely to hear Swan Lake, Susannah’s choice of record, or There’s A Hole In My Bucket, which was Priscilla’s, nor, it being the south country, Cock O’ The North, she had done well to get familiar with The Post Horn Gallop, John Peel, and A-Hunting We Will Go, contributed by Matthew.

Susannah heard the words “Class Nine into the ring, please,” with comparative calm, and did not even bother to answer Celandine Pinkney when she remarked that Swedish Rhapsody had lost condition.

There were several other shows within a radius of fifty miles that day, and some of the formidable entries in the catalogue had not materialised. In fact, the competitors had dwindled to a mere seven, of which the Pinkney pony was the most likely winner.

The rain that had threatened to ruin the Pinkneys’ gymkhana had softened the ground enough to allow the ponies to be galloped. Susannah wondered just how keen an eye, and ear, the nice homely-looking judge would prove to have, and whether Shamus O’Brien had really been right when he said Celandine’s pony had gone in the wind. Swedish Rhapsody was certainly looking leaner than when she had arrived, but she was fighting fit and could have galloped all day, had she been allowed, without the slightest sign of distress.

This time the judge refrained from being wholly absorbed in gossip with the ring steward and pivoted on his shooting-stick to watch every movement of every pony. He soon finished with the conventional walk, trot, and canter, and lined them up briskly with Celandine Pinkney first, Susannah below her, and a useful little animal rather like an animated mouse third.

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