Beholding Ronald, the promised horse, severely correct in his road saddle, and looking immensely tall as he stood on the stable floor, she inly applauded her own wisdom, strongly doubting that Theodore’s unpractised arm would have tossed her into her place as lightly as the master’s, and she was secretly overjoyed when the master himself mounted and joined the party with her, making its number nine; Esmeralda herself, the graduate of three lessons; Theodore, all his life accustomed to ride anything calling itself a horse, but making no pretenses to mastery of the equestrian science; the lawyer, understood, on his own authority, to be well informed in everything; the society young lady, erect, precise, self-satisfied; the Texan, riding with apparent laziness, his hands rather high and seldom quiet, but not to be shaken from his seat; the beauty, languid and secretly discontented because her horse was “intended for a brunette, and a ridiculous mount for a blonde”; Versatilia, who had “taken up riding a little,” and the cavalryman, calm, quiet, and fraternally regarded by the master, as he reviewed the little flock from the back of a horse which had been offered to him as the paragon of its species, and for which and its kind, as he announced after riding a square or two, he “was not paying a cent a carload.”

“It is a lovely horse,” said the beauty.  “It is such a beautiful color.  But men never care for color.”

“Good color is a good thing, undoubtedly,” said the master, “but a beautiful horse is a good horse, not necessarily an animal which would look well in a painted landscape, because its color would harmonize with the hue of the trees.”

“She is a beautiful girl, isn’t she,” said Esmeralda, looking admiringly at the beauty, who, having just remembered Tennyson’s line about swaying the rein with flying finger tips, was executing some movements which made her horse raise his ears to listen for the cause of such conduct, and then shake his head in mild disapproval.

“What do I care for a pretty girl?” demanded the master.  “Pretty rider is what I want to see, and ‘pretty rider’ is ‘good rider.’  Wait until that girl trots three minutes or so, and see whether or not she is pretty.”

The party went through the streets at a rapid walk, now and then meeting a horse-car, now and then a stray wagon, but invariably allowed to take its own way, with very little regard for the rule of the road.  The American who drives, whatever may be his social station, admires the courage of the woman who rides, but he is firmly convinced that she does not understand horses, and gives her all the space available wherein to disport herself.

“Are we all right in placing the ladies on the left?” asked Theodore, turning to the master.

“Of course,” cried the lawyer.  “We follow the English rule, and the left was the place of safety for the lady in the days when English equestrianism was born.  Travelers took the left of the road, and this placed the cavalier between his lady and any possible danger.”