to find in one so sweet and so gentle. And the brown blood mare, Kenilworth, that she always rode was a beauty. Yet, I’ve often wondered since then how she, or any woman, could ride at all in the old abominable side-saddle! But she could; and never gave much thought to the risks she often ran from the saddle rolling under the horse's belly; or her riding habit catching on tree stumps and brambles; or herself getting stuck in the horns if anything went wrong. On the other hand, I suppose mother would have been horrified at the very suggestion of riding astride. And I know the first time that one of the black gins was seen straddling a horse it became the joke of the station for long enough. But human prejudices and human ideas of what is modest or immodest, proper or improper, seem to change with the periods.
So putting on his hat and buckling a pair of spurs to his heels, the Governor strode across to the stable to get old Hyperion, a solid grey cob that no one but himself ever rode. But if the truth would out, I must confess that Ted and I—before Ted was sent way to the Grammar School in Brisbane—took quite a lot of turns out of him on the quiet. Few big logs were lying about the homestead, I fancy, that we didn't put Hyperion over more than once; and what a jumper he was! Mighty big pine and ironbark logs, most of them were, too, that no "clouting" could shift, And at them he would go, his ears pricked, looking straight ahead, then a couple of short strides and—over! And by gad, he’d go up so high sometimes, that when he landed we’d be
