There is plenty of room in the ring, now, so you change hands, and circle to the left, first walking and then trotting, slowly at first, and then rapidly, finding to your pleasant surprise, that, just as you begin to think that you can go no further, you are suddenly endowed with new strength and can make two more rounds.  “A good half mile,” your master says, approvingly, as you fall into a walk and pass him, and then you do a volte or two, and one little round at a canter, and then walk five minutes, and dismount to find the rider of the alleged William assuring John, the head groom, that redoubtable animal needs “taking down.”

“Shall ride him with spurs next time,” he says.  “I can manage him, but he would be too much for most men,” and away he goes and a flute-voiced little boy of eight mounts William, retransformed into Billy Buttons, and guides him like a lamb, and you escape up stairs to laugh.  But you have no time for this before the merciful young woman enters to say that she is going to another school, where she can do as she pleases and have better horses, too, and the more you and Nell assure her that there is no school in which she can learn without obedience, and that her horse was too good, if anything, the more determined she becomes, and soon you wisely desist.

As she departs, “Oh, dear,” you say, “I thought there was nothing but fun at riding-school, and just see all these queer folks.”

“My dear,” says philosophic Nell, “they ar part of the fun.  And we are fun to the old riders; and we are all fun to our master.”

Here you find yourselves enjoying a bit of fun from which your master is shut out, for three or four girls come up from the ring together, and, not seeing you, hidden behind your screens, two, in whom you and Nell have already recognized saleswomen from whom you have more than once bought laces, begin to talk to overawe the others.

“My deah,” says one, “now I think of it, I weally don’t like the setting of these diamonds that you had given you last night.  It’s too heavy, don’t you think?”

The other replies in a tone which would cheat a man, but in which you instantly detect an accent of surprise and a determination to play up to her partner as well as possible, that she “liked it very well.”

“I should have them reset,” says the former speaker.  “Like mine, you know; light and airy.  Deah me, I usedn’t to care for diamonds, and now I’m puffectly infatooated with them, don’t you know!  My!” she screams, catching sight of a church clock, and, relapsing into her everyday speech:  “Half-past four!  And I am due at”—­[An awkward pause.] “I promised to return at four!”

There is no more talk about diamonds, but a hurried scramble to dress, an a precipitate departure, after which one of the other ladies is heard to say very distinctly:  “I remember that girl as a pupil when I was teaching in a public school, and I know all about her.  Salary, four dollars a week.  Diamonds!”