“Prepare to whoa!  Whoa!” says the teacher, and both he and your banished cavalier congratulate you, and it dawns upon you that the society young lady is not the only person whom the master understands, and is able to manage.  However, you are grateful, and even pluck up courage to salute him when next you pass him; but alas! that does not soften his heart so thoroughly that he does not warningly ejaculate, “Right foot,” and then comes poor Nell’s turn.  She, reared in a select private school for young ladies, and having no idea of proper discipline, ventures to explain the cause of some one of her misdeeds, instead of correcting it in silence.  She does it courteously, but is met with, “Ah-h-h!  Miss Esmeralda, you know Miss Nell.  Is it not with her on foot as it is on horseback?  Does she not argue?”

You shake your head severely and loyally, but brave Nell speaks out frankly, “Yes, sir; I do.  But I won’t again.”

“I would have liked to ride straight at him,” she confides to you afterwards, “but he was right.  Still, it is rather astounding to hear the truth sometimes.”

And now, for the first time around, you are allowed to ride in pairs, and the word “interval,” meaning the space between two horses moving in parallel lines, is introduced, and you and Nell, who are together, congratulate yourselves on having in your exercise ride learned something of the manner in which the interval may be preserved exactly, for it is a greater trouble to the others than that “distance” which you have been told a thousand times to “keep.”  You have but very little of this practice, however, before you are again formed in file, and directed to “Prepare to volte singly!”

When this is done perfectly, it is a very pretty manoeuvre, and, the pupils returning to their places at the same movement, the column continues on its way with its distances perfectly preserved, but as no two of your class make circles of the same size, or move at similar rates of speed, your small procession finds itself in hopeless disorder, and in trying to rearrange yourselves, each one of you discovers that she has yet something to learn about turning.  However, after a little trot and the usual closing walk, the lesson ends, and you retire from the ring, with the exception of Nell, who, having been taught by an amateur to leap in a more or less unscientific manner, has begged the master to give her “one little lesson,” a proposition to which he has consented.

The hurdle is brought out, placed half-way down one of the long sides of the school, and Nell walks her horse quietly down the other, turns him again as she comes on the second long side, shakes her reins lightly, putting him to a canter, and is over—­ “beautifully,” as you say to yourself, as you watch her enviously.