Evening.  I am booked for a horseback ride with Little Handsome to-morrow morning.  How did she make me offer?  I did not mean to.  All country girls ride, I believe.  I often see Miss Etty cantering through the shady lanes all by herself.  I saw the bars down, at the end of the track through the wood, one day.  I immediately concluded that Little Ugly had paced off that way, that I need not see her from my window.  I put the bars up again, and lay in wait behind the bushes.  Soon I heard her approaching.  I come forward as she comes near, on that rat-like pony of hers, who holds his head down as if searching for something lost in the road.  I stand in doubt whether to laugh at her predicament, or advance in a gentlemanly manner to remove the obstacle I had put in her way.  When lo! the absurd little nag clears it at a bound, and skims away over the green track like a swallow, till he vanishes under the leafy arch.  I am left in a very foolish attitude, with mouth and eyes wide open.

Now this independent young lady shall be at liberty to take care of herself, with no officious interference of mine; I will not invite her to join us to-morrow morning, as I intended.  I wonder if any horses are to be procured that are not rats.  I hope Miss Flora knows enough to mount her pony, for I am sure I do not know how to help her.  Whew!  I hope we shall meet with no disasters!  I feel certain Little Handsome would scream like a sea-gull, pull the wrong rein, tangle her foot in the stirrup or riding-skirt, faint, fall, break her neck—­O horrors!  Will not the dear old Aunt Tabitha forbid her going?

What a well-proportioned and ladylike figure it was, now I think of it!  How gracefully she sat upon her flying Dobbin!

Sept. 25th.  Rainy.  Glad of it.  Breakfast late.  Miss Etty did not appear, having been up some hours, I imagine.  What for, I wonder?  What can she be about?  One thing pleases me in her.  If Aunt Tabitha wants any little attention, a needle threaded, or a dropped stitch taken up, Miss Etty quietly comes to her aid.  It is so entirely a matter of course, the old lady only smiles, but any service from Flora calls forth an acknowledgment; it being a particular effort of good nature, and generally the fruit of a direct appeal.  Miss Etty talks more than she did, too.  While I am talking nonsense with Little Handsome, I hear her amusing my good aunty, and I catch a few words, her utterance having a peculiar distinctness, and the lowest tones being fine and clear, like those of a good singer on a pianissimo strain.  It is a peculiarly ladylike articulation; was she born and bred in Ratborough, I wonder?  She never speaks while we are singing.  Does she like music, then?  I asked her once, but what sort of answer is “Yes!” to such a question?  And that is all I elicited.