be gone over. She had been teaching Aggie to drive it, and owing to
Aggie's thinking she had her foot on the brake when it was really on the
gas, they had leaped a four-foot ditch and gone down into a deep ravine,
from which both Tish and Aggie had had to be pulled up with ropes.

Well, with no machine and Charlie Sands away, we hardly knew how to plan
the summer. Tish thought at first she would stay at home and learn to
ride. She thought her liver needed stirring up. She used to ride, she
said, and it was like sitting in a rocking-chair, only perhaps more so.
Aggie and I went out to her first lesson; but when I found she had
bought a divided skirt and was going to try a man's saddle, I could not
restrain my indignation.

"I'm going, Tish," I said firmly, when she had come out of the
dressing-room and I realized the situation. "I shan't attempt to
restrain you, but I shall not remain to witness your shame."

Tish eyed me coldly. "When you wish to lecture me," she snapped, "about
revealing to the public that I have two legs, if I do wear a skirt,
don't stand in a sunny doorway in that linen dress of yours. I am going
to ride; every woman should ride. It's good for the liver."

I think she rather wavered when they brought the horse, which looked
larger than usual and had a Roman nose. The instructor handed Tish four
lines and she grabbed them nervously in a bunch.

"Just a moment!" said the instructor, and slipped a line between each
two of her fingers.

Tish looked rather startled. "When I used to ride--" she began with
dignity.

But the instructor only smiled. "These two are for the curb," he
said--"if he bolts or anything like that, you know. Whoa, Viper! Still,
old man!"

"Viper!" Tish repeated, clutching at the lines. "Is--is he--er--nasty?"

"Not a bit of it," said the instructor, while he prepared to hoist her
up. "He's as gentle as a woman to the people he likes. His only fault is
that he's apt to take a little nip out of the stablemen now and then.
He's very fond of ladies."

"Humph!" said Tish. "He's looking at me rather strangely, don't you
think? Has he been fed lately?"

"Perhaps he sees that divided skirt," I suggested.

Tish gave me one look and got on the horse. They walked round the ring
at first and Tish seemed to like it. Then a stableman put a nickel into
a player-piano and that seemed to be a signal for the thing to trot.
Tish said afterward that she never hit the horse's back twice in