When you arrive at the school for your second class lesson, Esmeralda, you find the dressing-room pervaded by a silence as clearly indicative of a recent tempest as the path cloven through a forest by a tornado.  From the shelter of screens and from retired nooks, come sounds indicative of garments doffed and donned with abnormal celerity and severity, but never a word of joking, and never a cry for deft-fingered Kitty’s assistance, and then, little by little, even these noises die away, and the palace of the Sleeping Beauty could not be more quiet.  No girl stirs from her lurking-place, until our yourself issue from your pet corner, and then Nell, a warning finger on her lip, noiselessly emerges from hers, and you go into the reception room together, and she explains to you that, despite her announcement that she would never come again, the society young lady has appeared, and has announced her intention to defend what she grandly terms her position as a lady.

“And the master will think us, her associates, as unruly as she is!” Nell almost sobs.  “If I were he, I would send the whole class home, there!” But the other girls now enter, each magnificently polite to the others, and the file of nine begins its journey along the wall, attended as before, the society young lady taking great pains about distance, and really doing very well, but the beauty sitting with calm negligence which soon brings a volley of remonstrance from both teachers, who address her much after the fashion of Sydney Smith’s saying, “You are on the high road to ruin the moment you think yourself rich enough to be careless.”

“You must not keep your whip in contact with your horse’s shoulder all the time,” lectured one of the teachers, “if you do, you have no means of urging him to go forward a little faster.  Keep it pressed against the saddle, not slanting outward or backward.  When you use it, do it without relaxing your hold upon the reins, for if, by any mischance, your horse should start quickly, you will need it.  Forward, ladies, forward! don’t stop in the corners!  Use your whips a very little, just as you begin to turn!  Miss Esmeralda, keep to the wall!  No, no!  Don’t keep to the wall by having your left rein shorter than your right!  They should be precisely even.”

“As you approach the corner,” says the other teacher quietly, speaking to you alone, “carry your right hand a little nearer to your left without bending your wrist, so that your rein will just touch your horse’s neck on the right side.  That will keep his head straight.”

“But he seems determined to go to the right,” you object.

“That is because your right rein is too short now.  While we are going down the long side of the school, make the reins precisely even.  Now, lay the right rein on his neck, use your whip, and touch him with your heel to make him go on; bend your right wrist to turn him, use your whip once more, and go on again!”