as though it were four inches, hands
waving, eyes alight, lips parted in gay laughter. Tzaritza's joyful bark
mingling with their voices as she rushed away.

The girls' cries of admiration or amazement drowned Dawson's:

"Well, 'Hi'll be blowed! Hi couldn't a done hit like that to save me
'ead," which was quite true, for very few could ride as these young
girls rode.

Meanwhile back in the circle two of Dawson's pupils were expressing
themselves without reserve.

"I mean to learn to ride like _that_," announced Rosalie Breeze. "The
idea of bouncing up and down in a stupid old side-saddle when we could
just as well sit as Polly and Peggy do. Why, I never saw anything as
graceful as those two girls in my life. Can't _you_ show me how, Dawson?
If you can't you can just make up your mind I am going to find someone
who _can_. Jack-o'-Lantern's sure enough disgusted with _this_ show-down,
and I believe that's the reason he has no more spirit than a bossy-cow."

"I'm going to speak to Mrs. Vincent," announced Juno. "This may be all
very conventional and correct, but all I can do is rise and fall in a
trot; I'm petrified if Lady Belle breaks into a canter, and if she were
to leap over that fence, I'd break my neck. Yet did you ever _see_
anything so graceful as those two girls and that magnificent dog when
they went over? I tell you, girls, we've got something worth while in
this school now, believe me. And just you wait!" and with this cryptic
ending Juno jockeyed ahead of her companions.

"I wish mother could have seen and heard it all," whispered Natalie.

"Then why don't you tell her, and ask her to come out and see those
girls ride," demanded Rosalie.

"That's exactly what I mean _to_ do," replied Natalie, with an emphatic
little nod. "I'm beginning to believe we don't know half we should know
about the stables."

"I should imagine that Mrs. Vincent would be a far better judge of what
was proper for young ladies than a couple of perfectly lawless girls who
have been brought up on a Southern ranch or something. _I_ call them
perfect hoydens and they would not be countenanced a moment in the Back
Bay," was Isabel's superior opinion.

"A Southern ranch?" echoed Rosalie, "You're mixed in your geography,
Isabel. They have plantations and estates in the South, but the ranches
are out West. But I don't wonder you prefer bumping along as you do on
the old Senator. You match him all right, all right. But just you wait
u