more weathered than the twenty-year-old girl, for he limped back into
the smelly shelter of the servants' quarters to cook his breakfast and
mumble about dogs and sahibs who prefer the sun.

She looked shrunk inside the riding-habit--not shrivelled, for she
sat too straight, but as though the cotton jacket had been made for a
larger woman. If she seemed tired, and if a stranger might have
guessed that her head ached until the chestnut curls were too heavy for
it, she was still supple. And, as she whipped the pony into an
unwilling trot and old mission-named Joanna broke into a jog behind,
revolt--no longer impatience, or discontent, or sorrow, but reckless
rebellion--rode with her.

It was there, plain for the world to see, in the firm lines of a little
Puritan mouth, in the angle of a high-held chin in the set of a gallant
little pair of shoulders. The pony felt it, and leaned forward to a
canter. Joanna scented, smelt, or sensed in some manner known to
Eastern old age, that purpose was afoot; this was to be no
early-morning canter, merely out and home again; there was no time,
now, for the customary tricks of corner-cutting and rest-snatching
under eaves; she tucked her head down and jogged forward in the dust,
more like a dog than ever. It was a dog's silent, striving
determination to be there when the finish came--a dog's disregard of
all object or objective but his master's--but a long-thrown stride,
and a crafty, beady eye that promised more usefulness than a dog's when
called on.

The first word spoken was when Rosemary drew rein a little more than
half-way along the palace wall.