"I didn't have horses when I was a young girl," Paula said to Graham; "and the fact that I can now not only have them but breed them and mold them to my heart's desire is always too good to be true. Sometimes I can't believe it myself, and have to ride out and look them over to make sure."
She turned her head and raised her eyes gratefully to Forrest; and Graham watched them look into each other's eyes for a long half- minute. Forrest's pleasure in his wife's pleasure, in her young enthusiasm and joy of life, was clear to Graham's observation. "Lucky devil," was Graham's thought, not because of his host's vast ranch and the success and achievement of it, but because of the possession of a wonder-woman who could look unabashed and appreciative into his eyes as the Little Lady had looked.
Graham was meditating, with skepticism, Ernestine's information that Paula Forrest was thirty-eight, when she turned to the colts and pointed her riding whip at a black yearling nibbling at the spring green.
"Look at that level rump, Dick," she said, "and those trotting feet and pasterns." And, to Graham: "Rather different from Nymph's long wrists, aren't they? But they're just what I was after." She laughed a little, with just a shade of annoyance. "The dam was a bright sorrel-- almost like a fresh-minted twenty-dollar piece--and I did so want a pair out of her, of the same color, for my own trap. Well, I can't say that I exactly got them, although I bred her to a splendid, sorrel trotting horse. And this is my reward, this black--and, wait till we get to the brood mares and you'll see the other, a full brother and mahogany brown. I'm so disappointed."
She singled out a pair of dark bays, feeding together: "Those are two of Guy Dillon's get--brother, you know, to Lou Dillon. They're out of different mares, not quite the same bay, but aren't they splendidly matched? And they both have Guy Dillon's coat."
She moved her subdued steed on, skirting the flank of the herd quietly in order not to alarm it; but a number of colts took flight.
"Look at them!" she cried. "Five, there, are hackneys. Look at the lift of their fore-legs as they run."
"I'll be terribly disappointed if you don't get a prize-winning four- in-hand out of them," Dick praised, and brought again the flash of grateful eyes that hurt Graham as he noted it.