All that is not your business.  Your sole concern is to keep your body in position, and your mind fixed on making your horse obey you, doing nothing of his own will.  Stop him now and then by leaning back, and drawing on the reins, not with your body but with your hands.  Then lean forward and go on, but if he should remain planted as fast as the Great Pyramid, if when started he should refuse to pay any attention to the little taps of your left heel and the touches of your whip, nay, if he should lie down and pretend to die, like a trick horse in a circus, don’t cluck.  No good riding master will teach a pupil to cluck or will permit the practice to pass unreproved, and riding-school horses do not understand it, and are quite as likely to start at the cluck of a rider on the other side of the ring as they are when a similar noise is made by the person on their own backs.

But now, just as you have shortened your reins for the fortieth time or so, your master rides up beside you.  You told him of your little three-lesson plan, and being wise in his generation, he smilingly assented to it.  “Shall we trot?” he asks, in an agreeable voice.  “Shorten your reins, now!  Don’t pull on them!  Right shoulder back!  Now rise from the saddle as I count, ’One, two, three, four!’ Off we go!’” You would like to know what he meant by “off!” “Off,” indeed!  You thought you were “off” the saddle.  You have been bounced up and down mercilessly, and have gasped, “Stop him!” before you have been twice around the ring, and not one corner have you been able to turn properly.  As for your elbows, you know that they have been flying all abroad, but still—­it was fun, and you would like to try again.  You do try again, and you would like to try again.  You do try again, and, at last, you are conscious of a sudden feeling of elasticity, of sympathy with your horse, of rising when he does, and then your master looks at you triumphantly, and says:  “You rose that time,” and leaves you to go to some other pupil.  And then you walk your horse again, trying to keep in position, and you make furtive little essays at trotting by yourself, and find that you cannot keep your horse to the wall, although you pull your hardest at his left rein, the reason being that, unconsciously, you also pull at the right rein, and that he calmly obeys what the reins tell him and goes straight forward.  Then your master offers to help you by lifting you, grasping your right arm with his left hand, and you make one or two more circuits of the ring, and then the hour is over and you dismount and go to the dressing-room.

Tired, Esmeralda?  A little, and you do wonder whether you shall not be a bruised piece of humanity to-morrow.  Not if your flesh be as hard as any girl’s should be in these days of gymnasiums, but if you have managed to bruise a muscle or to strain one, lay a bottle of hot water against it when you go to bed and it will not be painful in the morning.  If, in spite of warnings, you have been so careless about your underclothing as to cause a blister, a bit of muslin saturated with Vaseline, with a drop of tincture of benzoin rubbed into it, makes a plaster which will end the smart instantly.