whereupon your heart sinks within you.
What will he say when he sees the necessary brevity of your
performance?

Other riders enter: two or three men mounted on their own horses,
beautiful creatures concerning whose value fabulous tales are
told in the stable; the best rider of the school, very quietly
and correctly dressed, and managing her horse so easily that the
women in the gallery do not perceive that she is guiding him at
all, although the real judges, old soldiers, a stray racing man
or two, the other school pupils and the master--regard her
admiringly, and the grooms, as they bring in new horses, keep an
eye on her and her movements, as they linger on their way back to
the stable.

"Her horse is very good," Theodore admits, "but I don't think
much of her. Well, yes, she is pretty," he admits, as she
executes the Spanish trot for a few steps and then pats her
horse's shoulder; "it's pretty, but anybody could do it on a
trained horse, couldn't they, sir?" he asks your master, who
rides up, mounted on his own pet horse.

"Anybody who knew how. The horse has been trained to answer
certain orders, but the orders must be given. An untrained horse
would not understand the orders, no matter how good an animal he
might be. Antinous might not have been able to ride Bucephalus,
and I don't believe that Alexander could have coaxed Rosinante
into a Spanish trot. It isn't enough to have a Corliss engine, or
enough to have a good engineer: you must have them both, and they
must be acquainted with one another. I don't believe that horse
would do that for you."

"No, I don't think he would," Theodore says dryly, for he has
been watching, and has reluctantly owned to himself that he does
not see how the movement is effected. Meantime, you, Esmeralda,
have been arduously devoting yourself to maintaining a correct
attitude, and are rewarded by hearing somebody in the gallery
wonder whether you represent the kitchen poker or Bunker Hill
Monument.

"Don't mind," your master says, encouragingly. "It is better to
be stiffly erect than to be crooked, and as for the person who
spoke, she could not ride a Newfoundland dog," and with that he
touches his hat, and rides lightly across the ring to speak to a
lady whose horse has, in the opinion of the gallery, been showing
a very bad temper, although in reality every plunge and curvet
has been made in answer to her wrist and to the tiny spur which
his rider wears and uses when need