edge of Violet
Tempest's rebellious spirit. He would not see that he was obnoxious to
her. He spoke to her and looked at her as sweetly as if there had been
the friendliest understanding between them. In all his conduct, in any
act of his which approached the assumption of authority, he went to
work with supreme gentleness. Yet he had his grip upon everything
already, and was extending his arms in every direction, like an
octopus. There were alterations being made in the garden which Violet
knew were his, although Mrs. Tempest was supposed to have originated
them. He had, in some measure, assumed dominion over the stables. His
two hunters were already quartered there. Vixen saw them when she went
her morning round with a basket of bread. They were long-bodied,
hungry-looking animals; and the grooms reported them ravenous and
insatiable in their feeding.

"When they've eat their corn they eats their 'ay, and when they've eat
their 'ay they eats their bed, and then they takes and gnaws the wooden
partitions. They'll eat up all the woodwork in the stable, before
they've done. I never see such brutes," complained Bates, the
head-groom.

Vixen fancied these animals were in some wise typical of their owner.

One morning when Vixen was leaning upon the half-door of Arion's
loose-box, giving herself up to a quarter of an hour's petting of that
much-beloved animal, Captain Winstanley came into the stable.

"Good-morning, Miss Tempest. Petting that pretty little bay of yours?
I'm afraid you'll spoil him. You ought to hunt him next October."

"I shall never hunt again."

"Pshaw! At your age there's no such word as never. He's the neatest
little hunter in the Forest. And on his by-days you might ride one of
mine."

"Thanks," said Vixen, with a supercilious glance at the most leggy of
the two hunters, "I shouldn't care to be up there. I should feel myself
out of everything."

"Oh, by-the-way," said Captain Winstanley, opening the door of another
loose-box, "what are we to do with this fellow?"

"This fellow" was a grand-looking bay, with herculean quarters, short
legs, and a head like a war-horse. He snorted indignantly as the
Captain slapped his flank, and reared his splendid crest, and seemed as
if he said "Ha, ha!"

"I don't quite know of whom you are speaking when you say 'we,'" said
Vixen, with an unsmiling countenance.

"Naturally of your mother and myself. I should like to include you in
all our family arrangem