Buy your ticket before you go to the dressing-room, and ask if you may have a key to a locker.  Dress as quickly as you can, and if there be no maid in the dressing-room, lock up your street clothing and keep your key.  If there be a maid, she will attend to this matter, and will assist you in putting on your skirt, showing you that it buttons on the left side, and that you must pin it down the basque of your jersey or your jacket in the back, unless you desire it to wave wildly with every leap of your horse.  Flatter not yourself that lead weights will prevent this!  When a horse begins a canter that sends you, if your feelings be any gauge, eighteen good inches nearer the ceiling, do you think that an ounce of lead will remain stationary? give a final touch to your hairpins and hatpins, button your gloves, pull the rubber straps of your habit over your right toe and left heel, and you are ready.

In most schools, you will be made to mount from the ground, and you will find it surprisingly and delightfully easy to you.  What it may be to the master who puts you into the saddle is another matter, but nine out of ten teachers will make no complaint, and will assure you that they do very well.

If you wish to deceive any other girl’s inconsiderate mother whom you may find comfortably seated in a good position for criticism, and to make her suppose that you are an old rider, keep silence.  Do not criticise your horse or his equipments, do not profess inability to mount, but when you master says “Now!” step forward and stand facing in the same direction of your horse, placing your right hand on the upper pommel of the two on the left of the saddle.

Set your left foot in whichever hand he holds out for it.  Some masters offer the left, some the right, and some count for a pupil, and others prefer that she should count for yourself.  The usual “One, two, three!” means, one, rest the weight strongly on the right foot; two, bend the right knee, keeping the body perfectly erect; three, spring up from the right foot, turning very slightly to the left, so as to place yourself sideways on the saddle, your right hand toward the horse’s head.

Some masters offer a shoulder as a support for a pupil’s left hand, and some face toward the horse’s head and some toward his tail, so it is best for you to wait a little for directions, Esmeralda, and not to suppose that, because you know all about Lucy Fountain’s way of mounting a horse, or about James Burdock’s tuition of Mabel Vane, there is no other method of putting a lady in the saddle.

After your first lesson, you will find it well to practise springing upward from the right foot, holding your left on a hassock, or a chair rung, your right hand raised as if grasping the pommel, your shoulders carefully kept back, and your body straight.  It is best to perform this exercise before a mirror, and when you begin to think you have mastered it, close you eyes, give ten upward springs and then look