"you kill him at
least three hundred and sixty-four times oftener in the course of the
year than you need. If he does break his neck, he can only do it once,
and you bewail his loss every day."

"Now, Heaven bless the young gentleman, sir, and meaning no
disrespect, but don't ye go for to tempt Providence by joking about
it, and him perhaps brought a hopeless corpse to the side door this
very evening," said Mrs. Bundle, her red cheeks absolutely blanched by
the vision she had conjured up. Why, I cannot say, but she had fully
made up her mind that when I was brought home dead, as she believed
that, sooner or later, I was pretty sure to be, I should be brought to
the side-door. Now "the side-door," as it was called, was a little
door leading into the garden, and less used, perhaps, than any other
door in the house. Mrs. Bundle, I believe, had decided that in that
tragedy which she was constantly rehearsing, the men who should find
my body would avoid the front-door, to spare my father the sudden
shock of meeting my corpse. The side-door, too, was just below the
nursery windows. Mrs. Bundle herself, would, probably, be the first to
hear any knocking at it, and she naturally pictured herself as taking
a prominent part in the terrible scene she so often fancied. It was
perhaps a good thing, on the whole, that she chose this door in
preference to those in constant use, otherwise every ring or knock at
the front or back door must have added greatly to her anxieties.

I fear I did not do much to relieve them. I rather aggravated them.
Partly I believe in the conceit of showing off my own skill and
daring, and partly by way of "hardening" Mrs. Bundle's nerves. When
more knowledge, or longer custom, or stronger health or nerves, have
placed us beyond certain terrors which afflict other people, we are
apt to fancy that, by insisting upon their submitting to what we do
not mind, our nervous friends can or ought to be forced into the
unconcern which we feel ourselves; which is, perhaps, a little too
like dosing the patient with what happens to agree with the doctor.

Thus I fondled my pony's head and dawdled ostentatiously at his heels
when Nurse Bundle was most full of fears of his biting or kicking. But
I feel sure that this, and the tricks I played to show the firmness of
my "seat," only made it seem to her the more certain that, from my
recklessness, I must some day be bitten, kicked, or thrown.

I had several falls, and one