Titmouse's stable was lighted better then the rest. The door stood
open, and there was Titmouse, with the neat little quilted doeskin
saddle still on his back, waiting to be fed and petted by his young
mistress. It was a pretty picture, the old low-ceiled stable, with its
wide stalls and roomy loose-boxes and carpet of plaited straw, golden
against the deep brown of the woodwork.

Vixen ran into the box, and took off Titmouse's bridle, he holding down
his head, like a child submitting to be undressed. Then, with many
vigorous tugs at straps and buckles, and a good deal of screwing up of
her rosy lips in the course of the effort, Vixen took off her pony's
saddle.

"I like to do everything I can for him," she explained, as Rorie
watched her with an amused smile; "I'd wisp him down if they'd let me."

She left the leather panel on Titmouse's back, hung up saddle and
bridle, and skipped off to a corn-chest to hunt for apples. Of these
she brought half-a-dozen or so in the skirt of her habit, and then,
swinging herself lightly into a comfortable corner of the manger, began
to carry out her system of reward for good conduct, with much coquetry
on her part and Titmouse's, Rorie watching it all from the empty stall
adjoining, his folded inns resting on the top of the partition. He said
not another word about his mother, or the duty that called him home to
Briarwood, but stood and watched this pretty horsebreaker in a dreamy
contentment.

What was Violet Tempest, otherwise Vixen, like, this October evening,
just three months before her fifteenth birthday? She made a lovely
picture in this dim light, as she sat in the corner of the old manger,
holding a rosy-cheeked apple at a tantalising distance from Titmouse's
nose: yet she was perhaps not altogether lovely. She was brilliant
rather than absolutely beautiful. The white skin was powdered with
freckles. The rippling hair was too warm an auburn to escape an
occasional unfriendly remark from captious critics; but it was not red
hair for all that. The eyes were brownest of the brown, large, bright,
and full of expression. The mouth was a thought too wide, but it was a
lovely mouth notwithstanding. The lips were full and firmly
moulded--lips that could mean anything, from melting tenderness to
sternest resolve. Such lips, a little parted to show the whitest,
evenest teeth in Hampshire, seemed to Rorie lovely enough to please the
most critical connoisseur of feminine beauty.