She smiled up at Richard and he smiled back.  “I rather think you’re right,” he admitted.  “I used to think myself there was nothing like a good horse.  I’d like to exchange the car for one just now; I’m sure of that.”

“It wouldn’t buy any one of ours.”  Roberta, coming up, glanced from the big machine to the trio of interested animals, all of which were keeping watchful eyes on the intruder.  “Nonsense, Colonel,—­stand still!”

“I don’t want to buy one of yours; I want one of my own, to ride back with you—­if you’d let me.”

“Anyhow, you can stop and have a bite with us,” said Ted, with a sudden thought.  “Can’t he, Rob?”

Roberta smiled.  “If he is as hungry as he looks.”

“Do I look hungry?”

“Starving.  So do we, no doubt.  Come and have some sandwiches.”

“We’re going to toast them,” explained Ruth, walking back to the fire with Richard when he had leaped with alacrity over the fence, his hat left behind, his brown head shining in the sun, his face happier than any of his fellow-clubmen had seen it in a year, as they would have been quick to notice if any of them had come upon him now.  “We have ginger ale, too; do you like ginger ale?”

“Immensely!” Richard eyed the preparations with interest.  “How do you toast your sandwiches?”

“On forks of wood; Ted’s going to cut them.”

“Please let me.”  And the guest fell to work.  He found a keen enjoyment in preparing these implements, and afterward in the process of toasting, which was done every-one-for-himself, with varying degrees of success.  The sandwiches were filled with a rich cheese mixture, and the result of toasting them was a toothsome morsel most gratifying to the hungry palate.

“One more?” urged Ruth, offering Richard the nearly empty box which had contained a good supply.

“Thank you—­no; I’ve had seven,” he refused, laughing.  “Nothing ever tasted quite so good.  And I’m an interloper.”

“Here’s to the interloper!” Ruth raised her glass and drank the last of her ginger ale.  “We always provide for one.  Usually it’s a small boy.”

“More often a pair of them.  And always there are Bess, Colonel, and Sheik.”  Roberta rose to her feet, the last three sandwiches in hand, and walked away to the horses tied to the fence-rail.

Richard’s eyes followed her.  In the austere lines of her riding-habit he could see more clearly than he had yet done what a superb young image of health and energy she was.

“Rob adores horses,” Ruth remarked, looking after her sister also.  “You ought to see her ride cross-country.  My Bess can’t jump, but her Colonel can.  I don’t believe there’s anything in sight Rob and Colonel couldn’t jump.  But I can never get used to seeing her; I have to shut my eyes when Colonel rises, and I don’t open them till I hear him land.  But he’s never fallen with her, and she says he never will.”