The young ones must go alone,
and those who tremble most for their safety cannot follow to take care
of them.
I really shrink from realizing to myself what Nurse Bundle must have
suffered whilst I was learning to ride. The novel exercise, the
stimulus of risk, that "put new life into me," were to her so many
daily grounds for the sad probability of my death.
"Every blessed afternoon do I look to see him brought home on a
shutter, with his precious neck broken, poor lamb!" she exclaimed one
afternoon, overpowered by the sight of me climbing on to the pony's
back, which performance I had brought her downstairs to witness, and
endeavoured to render more entertaining and creditable by secretly
stimulating the pony to restlessness, and then hopping after him with
one foot in the stirrup, in what I fancied to be a very knowing
manner.
"Why, my dear Mrs. Bundle," said my father, smiling, "you kill him at
least three hundred and sixty-four times oftener in the course of the
year than you need. If he does break his neck, he can only do it once,
and you bewail his loss every day."
"Now, Heaven bless the young gentleman, sir, and meaning no
disrespect, but don't ye go for to tempt Providence by joking about
it, and him perhaps brought a hopeless corpse to the side door this
very evening," said Mrs.
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