Rotten Row on a brilliant June morning, and Hyde Park at its loveliest.
The London "season" at its height, and throngs of fashionably-dressed
men and women "taking the air," strolling idly to and fro, lounging on
little green-painted chairs, or leaning on the rails watching the
riders of all nationalities.

A sight well worth watching. It is the week of the International Horse
Show, and there are many foreign officers in gaily-coloured uniforms,
mounted on sleek and beautiful thoroughbreds, cantering along amidst a
throng of more soberly clad riders of both sexes.

The "liver brigade" is at full strength. These red-faced,
white-moustached, elderly men, with "Retired Colonel, Indian Army,"
stamped all over them, as it were, are probably telling each other, as
they try to urge their hacks to a gallop, that "the Row is becoming
demnably overcrowded, sir, and the place is going to the dogs. Those
confounded foreigner fellows look like circus performers, and that sort
of young woman wouldn't have been tolerated in my young days.... Gad!
just look at that girl!"

The girl in question is mounted on a high-spirited bay which is
resenting her mastery and is fighting to get the bit between his teeth.
The horse rears, jerking his fine head from side to side, then bucks
with a whinny of rage, and the "liver brigade" scatters. A mounted
policeman, on the alert to render assistance and prevent accidents,
brings along his well-trained steed at a hand-gallop, recognises the
rider of the bucking thoroughbred, and reins up with a grin on his
bronzed face.