Bring forth the horse!
Byron.

Being ready to start, Esmeralda, the question now arises:  “Is a riding school,” as the girl asked about the new French play, “a place to which one can take her mother?” Little girls too young to dress themselves should be attended by their mothers or by their maids, but an older girl no more needs guardianship at riding-school than at any other place at which she receives instruction, and there is no more reason why her mother should follow her into the ring than into the class-room.

Her presence, even if she preserve absolute silence, will probably embarrass both teacher and pupil, and although her own children may not be affected by it, it will be decidedly troublesome to the children of other mothers.

If, instead of being quiet, she talk, and it is the nature of the mother who accompanies her daughter to riding-school to talk volubly and loudly, she will become a nuisance, and even a source of actual danger, by distracting the attention of the master from his pupils, and the attention of the pupils from their horses, to say nothing of the possibility that some of her pretty, ladylike screams of, “Oh, darling, I know you’re tired!” or, “Oh, what a horrid horse; see him jump!” may really frighten some lucky animal whose acquaintance has included no women but the sensible.

If she be inclined to laugh at the awkward beginners, and to ridicule them audibly—­but really, Esmeralda, it should not be necessary to consider such an action, impossible in a well-bred woman, unlikely in a woman of good feeling!  Leave your mother, if not at home, in the dressing-room or the reception room, and go to the mounting-stand alone.

In some schools you may ride at any time, but the usual morning hours for ladies’ lessons are from nine o’clock to noon, and the afternoon hours from two o’clock until four.  Some masters prefer that their pupils should have fixed days and hours for their lessons, and others allow the very largest liberty.  For your own sake it is better to have a regular time for your lessons, but if you cannot manage to do so, do not complain if you sometimes have to wait a few minutes for your horse, or for your master.

The school is not carried on entirely for your benefit, although you will at first assume that it is.  As a rule, a single lesson will cost two dollars, but a ten-lesson ticket will cost but fifteen dollars, a twenty-lesson ticket twenty-five dollars, and a ticket for twenty exercise rides twenty dollars.  In schools which give music-rides, there are special rates for the evenings upon which they take place, but you need not think of music-rides until you have had at least the three lessons which you desire.