once.

Miss Fitzroy's riding was of the sort that makes up in pluck what it
wants in knowledge. She stuck on by sheer force of character; that she
sat fairly straight, and let a horse's head alone were gifts of
Providence of which she was wholly unconscious. Riding, in her opinion,
was just getting on to a saddle and staying there, and making the thing
under it go as fast as possible. She had always ridden other people's
horses, and had ridden them so straight, and looked so pretty,
that--other people in this connection being usually men--such trifles as
riding out a hard run minus both fore shoes, or watering her mount
generously during a check, were endured with a forbearance not frequent
in horse owners. Hunting people, however, do not generally mount their
friends, no matter how attractive, on young and valuable horses. Fanny
Fitz's riding had been matured on well-seasoned screws, and she sallied
forth to the subjugation of the Connemara filly with a self-confidence
formed on experience only of the old, and the kind, and the cunning.

The filly trembled and sidled away from the garden-seat up to which
Johnny Connolly had manoeuvred her. Johnny's supreme familiarity with
young horses had brought him to the same point of recklessness that
Fanny had arrived at from the opposite extreme, but some lingering
remnant of prudence had induced him to put on the cavesson headstall,
with the long rope attached to it, over the filly's bridle. The latter
bore with surprising nerve Fanny's depositing of herself in the saddle.

"I'll keep a holt o' the rope, Miss Fanny," said Johnny, assiduously
fondling his pupil; "it might be she'd be strange in herself for the
first offer. I'll lead her on a small piece. Come on, gerr'l! Come on
now!"