“Like a snowflake,” you murmur, for you fancy that you have a pretty wit like Will Honeycomb.

“Not at all,” says your master.  “The snowflake comes down because it must, and comes to stay.  You come because you choose, and come down to rise again instantly.  You must keep your right shoulder back, and your hands on a level with your elbows, and you must turn the corners, not let your horse turn them as he pleases—­ but more pupils are coming now and I must give you another horse.  You may have Billy Buttons.”  The change is effected, the other pupils begin their lessons, and you and Billy walk deliberately about in the centre of the ring.

At first he keeps moderately near the wall, but after a time you find that the circle described by his footsteps has grown smaller, and that he apparently fancies himself walking around a rather small tree.  Your master rides up as you are pulling and jerking your left rein in the endeavor to come nearer to the wall, and says, “Try Billy’s canter.  I’ll take a round with you.  Strike him on the shoulder, and when you want him to trot, shorten your reins and touch him on the flank.  Those are the signals which he minds best.  Now!  Canter.”

You remember having heard of a “canter like a rocking-chair.”  Charlie had it, but you were too inexperienced to know it, but bad riders long ago deprived Billy of any likeness to a rocking-chair.  He knows that if he should let himself go freely, you would come near to making him rear by pulling on the reins, and so he goes along “one, two, three, one, two, three,” deliberately, and you feel and look, as you hear an unsympathetic gazer in the gallery remark, “like a pea in a hot skillet.”  You prided yourself on keeping your temper unruffled under the wise criticism of your master, but in truth you did not really believe him.  You said to yourself that he was too particular, and you even thought of informing him that he must not expect perfection immediately, but this piece of impudence, spoken by a person who, for aught that you can tell, does not know Billy from a clotheshorse, convinces you instantly, and you decide to canter no more, but to trot, and so you “shorten your reins and strike him on the flank.”

As you shorten the right rein more than the left, and as your whip falls as lightly as if you meant the blow for yourself, Billy goes to the centre of the ring, but you jerk him to the wall, and in time, trot he does.  But your left foot swings now forward and now outward, and you cannot rise.  The regular, pulsating count by which a clever girl is moving like a machine, irritates you, and you tell another beginner, “They really ought to let us rise on alternate bats at first, until we are more accustomed to the motion,” and she agrees with you, and both of you try this, which might be called trotting on the American pupil plan, but even the calm Billy manages to take about six steps between what you regard as the “alternate beats,” and at last breaks into a canter, and you hear yourself ordered, very peremptorily, to “sit down.”  You obey, but begin the pea in the skillet performance again, and at last you tell your master that you will not try to trot anymore, but would like to know all about managing the reins.