have him talk to her. There
were a number of interests they had in common; the smell of the new
grass, the tempting silver-green of willows budding along the lake
beyond the fence, delighted him, too, while Bonita herself was deeply
interested in his University.

She could remember perfectly the days when the ranch spread undisturbed
from her paddock in the stockfarm yard to the deep shadows of the
Arboretum. Then she was only a colt, to be sure; but the world beyond
the paddock fence interested her. The grooms in the yard were not more
sorry than she herself that the last colt from a famous sire should be a
filly with an imperfect ankle-joint. When they took the other colts out
of the paddock to put them through their morning lessons around the
little ring in the kindergarten, she wished mightily to follow. She
turned about the corral at a good speed to show them that she had the
proper spirit of her blood, but they always shut the red gate too soon
and the others went on up the road impudently flicking their fuzzy tails
at her.

A gray-bearded man with kindly eyes, whom they called the "Governor,"
used to drive up under the blossoming eucalyptus trees every now and
then; he stopped one day by her paddock and came to look at her. Bonita
liked him at once, and she paid him the most delicate attention she knew
by trying to eat his clothes. The Governor laughed as he put her off,
and said that it was too bad about her ankle. Then he drove over to
watch the kindergarten learn the alphabet of race-winning.

Later, she watched her fellows go lightly down the road to the stock car
and rumble away over the track to the main line and on to the great
world where men put trust in them and sent them back to the Farm with
newspaper clippings and horseshoe wreaths made of immortelles with the
figure 2-and-a-fraction in the middle.

When she was grown and they had put her out in a side pasture, there
were some new stables there, with a lot of men thronging round them who
did not look like grooms. The knowledge that something of importance to
the world was about to happen the other side of the fence made her feel
more contented. If she could not travel in a box car to see such things,
it was good to have some of the excitement of it brought in to the
ranch.

At first she did not notice much, being deeply interested just then in
the early education of Fenelon, 2.10-1/4, who was a fretful infant and
took up most of her time. When