MOBILE DIGITAL LIBRARY - SOCIETY OF YOUNG NIGERIAN ...

From that day forward, Chu Chu and Consuelo were not only firm friends but dailycompanions. In my devotion I would have presented the horse to the young girl, but withflattering delicacy she preferred to call it mine. "I shall erride it for you, Pancho," shesaid; "I shall feel," she continued with exalted although somewhat vague poetry, "That itis of you! You lofe the beast—it is therefore of a necessity you, my Pancho! It is yoursoul I shall erride like the wings of the wind—your lofe in this beast shall be my onlycavalier for ever." I would have preferred something whose vicarious qualities were lessuncertain than I still felt Chu Chu's to be, but I kissed the girl's hand submissively.It was only when I attempted to accompany her in the flesh, on another horse, that I feltthe full truth of my instinctive fears. Chu Chu would not permit any one to approach hermistress's side. My mounted presence revived in her all her old blind astonishment anddisbelief in my existence; she would start suddenly, face about, and back away from mein utter amazement as if I had been only recently created, or with an affected modesty asif I had been just guilty of some grave indecorum towards her sex which she really couldnot stand. The frequency of these exhibitions in the public highway were not onlydistressing to me as a simple escort, but as it had the effect on the casual spectators ofmaking Consuelo seem to participate in Chu Chu's objections, I felt that, as a lover, itcould not be borne. An attempt to coerce Chu Chu ended in her running away. And myfrantic pursuit of her was open to equal misconstruction. "Go it, Miss, the little dude isgainin' on you!" shouted by a drunken teamster to the frightened Consuelo, once checkedme in mid-career. Even the dear girl herself saw the uselessness of my real presence, and