You glance at the clock, perceive that you have been I the saddle almost an hour and a half, and murmur an apology.  “Don’t mind,” is the encouraging answer.  “As long as a pupil does not complain and call us stingy when we make her dismount, we do not say much.  But are you really going on the road, Monday, Miss Esmeralda?” “Yes, I am,” you answer.  “Ah, well,” he says, a little regretfully, “don’t forget, then.  Hold on with your right knee and sit down for the canter.”

What shall you do by way of exercise before Monday?  Practise all the old movements, a little of each one at a time, and take two lengths of ribbon as wide as an ordinary rein, or, better still, two leather straps, and fasten one to the knobs on the two sides of a door and run the other through the keyhole.  Call the knob straps the snaffle reins, and the keyhole straps the curb, and, sitting near enough to let them lie in your lap, practice picking them up and adjusting them with your eyes shut.  When you can do it quickly and neatly, try and see with how little exertion you can sway the door to left and right, and then practice holding these dummy reins while standing on one foot and executing the movement used in trotting.  If the door move by a hair’s breadth, it will show you that you are pulling too much, and you must remember that your hold on your horse’s mouth gives you greater leverage than you have on the door, and then, perhaps, you will pity the poor beast a little now and then.

What is that?  Your master treated you as if you were an ignorant girl?  So you are, dear, and even if you were not, if you knew all that there is in all the books, you might still be a bad horsewoman, because you might now know enough to use your knowledge.  You don’t care, and you feel very well, and are very glad that you went?  Of course, that is the invariable cry!  And you mean to take some more lessons if you find that you really need them?  Then leave your skirt in the dressing-room locker!  You will come back from your ride a wiser, but not a sadder, girl.  One cannot be sad on horseback.

V.

—­Pad, pad, pad!  Like a thing that was mad,
My chestnut broke away.
Thornbury.

Esmeralda was puzzled when she returned from her first riding party.  In the morning, looking very pretty in her borrowed riding habit, her English hat with the hunting guard made necessary by the Back Bay breezes, her brown gauntlets, and the one scarlet carnation in her button-hole, she drove to the riding-school, where she had agreed to meet Theodore and her other friends, not like Mrs. Gilpin, lest all should say that she was proud, but because her master had promised to lend her one of the school horses, to put her ion the saddle and to adjust her stirrup, and because she secretly felt that she would better give herself every possible advantage in what, as it came nearer, assumed the aspect of a trial rather than a pleasure.