Whereat Lasher laughed and touched his hat. He made it a rule to salute a joke in that manner, either from a general respect for humour, or looking at it in the light of a mental gratuity offered by his betters.
"There's one thing you can do, Master Jem, sir--leastwise, which you can do as well as any man in the British army," he said, with pardonable pride, "and that is sit a 'orse."
"Thanks to you, Lasher," Jem was kind enough to say with a flourish of his whip.
The dignity was now ebbing fast, and by the time that the clever little cob swung round the gate-post into the avenue of Stagholme, Jem and Lasher were fully re-established on the old familiar footing.
There was a bright moon overhead, and at the end of the avenue beyond the dip where the lake gleamed mysteriously, the gables
