Маленькая хозяйка большого дома / The Little Lady Of The Big House

The water starts working up in the mountains. It irrigates a score of mountain meadows before it makes the plunge and is clarified to crystal clearness in the next few rugged miles; and at the plunge from the highlands it generates half the power and all the lighting used on the ranch. Then it subirrigates lower levels, flows in here to the fish ponds.”

“Man,” Graham laughed, “you could make a poem about the water. I’ve met fire-worshipers, but you’re the first real water-worshiper I’ve ever encountered …”

Graham did not complete his thought. From the right, not far away, came a mighty splash and an outburst of women’s cries and laughter. They emerged in a blaze of sunshine, on an open space among the trees, and Graham saw an unexpected a picture.

And in the center of the pool, vertical in the water, struck upward and outward into the free air, while on its back, slipping and clinging, was the figure form, Graham realize that it was a woman who rode the horse. Her slim round arms were twined in stallion-mane[21 - stallion-mane – грива], while her white round knees slipped on the sleek.

Graham realized that the white wonderful creature was a woman, and sensed the smallness and daintiness of her. She reminded him of some Dresden china figure[22 - Dresden china figure – фигурка из дрезденского фарфора] set absurdly small and light and strangely on the drowning back of a titanic beast.

Her face smote Graham most of all. It was a boy’s face; it was a woman’s face; it was serious and at the same time amused. It was a white woman’s face—and modern; and yet, to Graham, it was all-pagan. This was not a creature and a situation one happened upon in the twentieth century.

The stallion sank. Glorious animal and glorious rider disappeared together beneath the surface, to rise together, a second later.

“Ride his neck!” Dick shouted. “Catch his foretop and get on his neck!”

The woman obeyed. The next moment, as the stallion balanced out horizontally in obedience to her shiftage of weight, she had slipped back to the shoulders.

“Who … who is it?” Graham queried.

“Paula—Mrs. Forrest.”

“My breath is quite taken away[23 - my breath is quite taken away – у меня дух захватило],” Graham said. “Do your people do such things frequently?”

“First time she ever did that,” Forrest replied.