Black Beech and Honeydew by Ngaio Marsh

father and his friends, had been actually hauled up the hill on sleds and then turned over and over until it was brought into position. It was then floored and lined and fitted with bunks like a cabin and became a guest room. From the beginning we loved our house. It was the fourth member of our family and for me, who still lives in it, has retained that character: it has been much added to but I think its personality has not changed. A city has spread across the open country where sheep and cows were grazed: the surrounding hills where I and my friends tobogganed and rode our ponies, are richly encrusted with bungaloid or functional dwellings. An enormous hospital covers the old mushroom-paddock: Cashmere, which is our part of the Port Hills, is now a ‘desirable suburb’. But no skyscraper out on the plains can ever be tall enough to hide the mountains and, strangely enough, the little river Heathcote, where we used to sail on rafts that we built ourselves, has scarcely changed. Children still paddle about on it in home-made craft.
    A few miles away from us, round the hills, there lived a horse-coper called Mr McGuinnes. For him my father conceived an admiration (’Decent fellow, McGuinnes’) and with him, soon after we arrived, a bargain was struck. Mr McGuinnes would keep me supplied with a pony which would be grazed in the Top Paddock towhich we had access. The pony would be changed from time to time and the outgoing mount sold, I now realize, as having been used by a child. I, who had never bestridden anything but my rocking horse, was madly excited.
    In due course the first pony arrived. Dolly, she was called: a pretty, mettlesome little creature who sidled up the lane showing the whites of her eyes. When my father put the new slithery pad on her back she kicked him. This unsettled his temper. Mr McGuinnes, who held her firmly with both hands near the bit, made the classic observation that it was only her fun. I was put up. Before my feet could be set in the stirrups, Dolly went into a series of humpbacked bucks. Like Mr Winkle before me, I clung to her neck while Mr McGuinnes and my father shouted at each other. I would have liked to show the intrepid spirit of Little Lord Fauntleroy who, it may be remembered, gallantly trotted and cantered at his first venture. But the Earl of Dorincourt’s stables did not produce half-broken buckjumpers for the little heir to learn upon, nor did the Earl and his groom scream instructions at each other not to let her bolt.
    ‘I’m getting off,’ I said.
    ‘No, you’re not,’ shouted my father.
    But somehow or another I did, and we had a row.
    ‘It doesn’t matter if you do fall off,’ roared my father. ‘It’d only be like falling off the kitchen table. You wouldn’t think anything of that. Get up again.’
    Dolly snorted, reared and backed, and Mr McGuinnes fought with her head.
    ‘I don’t want to,’ I said. ‘It’s not a bit like the kitchen table.’
    ‘Good Lord!’ said my father in disgust. ‘Here. I’ll show you, you ass.’
    He leapt into the saddle. ‘Let her go,’ he said sternly.
    Dolly made a complicated bound and broke into a gallop. Halfway down the lane she threw him and the rest of the afternoon was spent in recapturing her.
    My nerve, if not completely shattered, was far from secure. However, there were further equestrian attempts. Dolly was again ridden by my father and, after bolting with him for a considerable distance, came lathering back in what was held to be a chastened mood. I was led up and down the lane, whitely attempting to ride in my stirrups and hating it.
    I doubt if I would ever have become a horsey child if we had not, at this juncture, paid one of our visits to Dunedin. Here, under the guidance of a very old and almost stone-deaf gardener-groom, I became acquainted with two elderly ponies, Tasman and Tommy. I fed them over the paddock rails, learnt to bridle them, climbed on them of my own accord and when nothing untoward