"Where is he ?" "No; it's the Badger I'm speaking of," said Matthew, laughing, and pointing with his finger towards a corner of the field where my servant was leisurely throwing down a wall about two feet high to let him pass.
"Oh, how handsome! What a charger for a dragoon!" said Miss Dashwood.
Any other mode of praising my steed would have been much more acceptable.
The word "dragoon" was a thorn in my tenderest part that rankled and lacerated at every stir.

In a moment I was in the saddle, and scarcely seated when at once all the _mauvais honte_ of boyhood left me, and I felt every inch a man.

I often look back to that moment of my life, and comparing it with similar ones, cannot help acknowledging how purely is the self-possession which so often wins success the result of some slight and trivial association.

My confidence in my horsemanship suggested moral courage of a very different kind; and I felt that Charles O'Malley curvetting upon a thorough-bred, and the same man ambling upon a shelty, were two and very dissimilar individuals.
"No chance of the captain," said Matthew, who had returned from a _reconnaissance_ upon the road; "and after all it's a pity, for the day is getting quite favorable." While the young ladies formed pickets to look out for the gallant _militaire_, I seized the opportunity of prosecuting my acquaintance with Miss Dashwood, and even in the few and passing observations that fell from her, learned how very different an order of being she was from all I had hitherto seen of country belles.

A mixture of courtesy with _naivete;_ a wish to please, with a certain feminine gentleness, that always flatters a man, and still more a boy that fain would be one,--gained momentarily more and more upon me, and put me also on my mettle to prove to my fair companion that I was not altogether a mere uncultivated and unthinking creature, like the remainder of those about me.
"Here he is at last," said Helen Blake, as she cantered across a field waving her handkerchief as a signal to the captain, who was now seen approaching at a brisk trot.
As he came along, a small fence intervened; he pressed his horse a little, and as he kissed hands to the fair Helen, cleared it in a bound, and was in an instant in the midst of us.
"He sits his horse like a man, Misther Charles," said the old huntsman; "troth, we must give him the worst bit of it." Captain Hammersley was, despite all the critical acumen with which I canvassed him, the very beau-ideal of a gentleman rider; indeed, although a very heavy man, his powerful English thorough-bred, showing not less bone than blood, took away all semblance of overweight; his saddle was well fitting and well placed, as also was his large and broad-reined snaffle; his own costume of black coat, leathers, and tops was in perfect keeping, and even to his heavy-handled hunting-whip I could find nothing to cavil at.