"She'll make a real nice fashionable mare," remarked Johnny, opening the
gate of a field and leading the filly in, "and she's a sweet galloper,
but she's very frightful in herself. Faith, I thought she'd run up the
wall from me the first time I went to feed her! Ah ha! none o' yer
thricks!" as the filly, becoming enjoyably aware of the large space of
grass round her, let fling a kick of malevolent exuberance at the two
fox-terriers who were trotting decorously in her rear.

It was soon found that, in the matter of "stone gaps," the A B C of
Irish jumping, Connemara had taught the grey filly all there was to
learn.

"Begor, Miss Fanny, she's as crabbed as a mule!" said her teacher
approvingly. "D'ye mind the way she soaks the hind legs up into her!
We'll give her a bank now."

At the bank, however, the trouble began. Despite the ministrations of
Mr. Alexander and a long whip, despite the precept and example of Mr.
Connolly, who performed prodigies of activity in running his pupil in at
the bank and leaping on to it himself the filly time after time either
ran her chest against it or swerved from it at the last instant with a
vigour that plucked her preceptor from off it and scattered Fanny Fitz
and the fox-terriers like leaves before the wind. These latter were
divided between sycophantic and shrieking indignation with the filly for
declining to jump, and a most wary attention to the sphere of influence
of the whip. They were a mother and daughter, as conceited, as craven,
and as wholly attractive as only the judiciously spoiled ladies of their
race can be. Their hearts were divided between Fanny Fitz and the cook,
the rest of them appertained to the Misses Harriet and Rachael Fitzroy,
whom they regarded with toleration tinged with boredom.

"I tell ye now, Masther Freddy, 'tis no good for us to be goin' on
sourin' the mare this way. 'Tis what the fince is too steep for her.
Maybe she never seen the like in that backwards counthry she came from.
We'll give her the bank below with the ditch in front of it. 'Tisn't
very big at all, and she'll be bound to lep with the sup of wather
that's in it."

Thus Johnny Connolly, wiping a very heated brow.

The bank below was a broad and solid structure well padded with grass
and bracken, and it had a sufficiently obvious ditch, of some three feet
wide, on the nearer side. The grand effort was duly prepared for. The
bank was solemnly exhibited to the filly; the dogs, who had w