The Innocents by Margery Sharp

that she didn’t come back; but let me proceed to Antoinette’s riding lessons.
    3
    Our local riding stable is run by Honoria Packett, of whom personally I shall say little. I have never liked horsey women, and Honoria is moreover jocular—her loud Ha-ha! all too accurately imitating the sound of trumpets. But she managed her riding school very well, and even though it was now, owing to wartime restrictions, reduced to a string of children’s ponies, they were reassuringly sturdy and well-shod. A further advantage was that with no adults’ hacks at hire, she would now collect a child at its door, to be paced sedately on a leading-rein before gaining the open moorland or heath, and so came each Tuesday and Friday to collect Antoinette along with the three Cocker children.
    I shall never forget my first sight of Antoinette on pony-back. It was a Shetland, the baby’s mount. To begin with, such was her instant delight and affection she hugged it round the neck almost to the point of throttling; a pony being larger than a frog, she hugged it all the harder. Honoria detached her, I must say quite gently, and then lifted her into the saddle, and set her feet in the stirrups, and led her on the leading-rein; so quietly, I, on foot, easily kept up with them past the church and then up onto the heath.
    The young Cockers were all older than Antoinette, also more experienced. “Now trot!” ordered Honoria. Off the three tittupped in a wide, evidently familiar circle, not bunched together but keeping at a proper distance so that Honoria could scan them individually for backs straight and heels down. Evidently they passed muster, for after about ten minutes—
    â€œNow canter!” called Honoria.
    The change of rhythm was like that from a jig to a waltz, and achieved, at least to my own inexpert eye, quite beautifully.—But not so to Honoria’s. “John, you’re letting Mustard break!” she shouted, to the youngest Cocker. “Rein in and start again!” Alas, John reined in so abruptly he lost a stirrup, and as his siblings (I fear contemptuously) gave him a wide berth, Honoria instinctively abandoned Antoinette to trot up to him.
    Whereupon Antoinette, or perhaps rather her pony, decided to canter too. As if bored by so much walking, and then standing, the little beast, with Antoinette on his back, neatly nipped into place behind the two elder Cockers, and cantered after.
    Antoinette at least didn’t fall off. She hung on, it must be admitted, at first by his mane. But the second time round it was to the saddle she clung, feet feeling for the stirrups. “All halt!” shouted Honoria, herself dismounting and running to catch Antoinette’s bridle and lead her back. “Terribly sorry!” she panted, as soon as they were beside me. “It shouldn’t have happened, and I’ll see it won’t happen again. But she’s certain got guts, your little dumbo!” neighed Honoria.
    I always found her offensive. Antoinette’s riding lessons were nonetheless a success. In the first place she enjoyed them, and in the second she for the first time established a normal relationship with other children. It remained slight, the young Cockers just said “Hello” to her, but after the fourth or fifth lesson Antoinette was saying “Hello” back, which I felt an important addition to her vocabulary. The Shetland’s name was Pepper, so Antoinette learned that too. There were now four words she could pronounce perfectly: vermin, tureen, pepper and hello.
    And suddenly, months after Janet Guthrie’s visit, she surprised me with the far more difficult vocable “rucksack”; so then there were five. I strung them together to make a proper sentence for her: “Hello; in my rucksack I have vermin, pepper and a tureen,” and Antoinette learned it off and repeated it apparently with all the pleasure I myself should have felt in