machine run
away out on Himebaugh's east forty. Alonzo had took Doc Maybury out and
passes me coming back. 'How bad was she hurt?' I asks. The poor thing
looks down greatly embarrassed and mumbles: 'She has broken a limb.'
'Leg or arm?' I blurts out, forgetting all delicacy. You'd think I had
him pinned down, wouldn't you? Not Lon, though. 'A lower limb,' says he,
coughing and looking away.

"You see how men are till we put a spike collar and chain on 'em. When
Henrietta declared herself Alonzo read the riot act and declared marital
law. But there was Henrietta with the collar and chain and pretty soon
Lon was saying: 'You're quite right, Pettikins, and you ought to have
the thanks of the community for showing our ladies how to dress
rationally on horseback. It's not only sensible and safe but it's
modest--a plain pair of riding breeches, no coquetry, no frills, nothing
but stern utility--of course I agree.'

"'I hoped you would, darling,' says Henrietta. She went to Miss
Gunslaugh and had her make the costume, being one who rarely does things
by halves. It was of blue velvet corduroy, with a fetching little bolero
jacket, and the things themselves were fitted, if you know what I mean.
And stern utility! That suit with its rosettes and bows and frogs and
braid had about the same stern utility as those pretty little tin tongs
that come on top of a box of candy--ever see anybody use one of those?
When Henrietta got dressed for her first ride and had put on the Cuban
Pink Face Balm she looked like one of the gypsy chorus in the Bohemian
Girl opera.

"Alonzo gulped several times in rapid succession when he saw her, but
the little man never starts anything he don't aim to finish, and it was
too late to start it then. Henrietta brazened her way through Main
Street and out to the country club and back, and next day she put them
on again so Otto Hirsch, of the E-light Studio, could come up and take
her standing by the horse out in front of the Price mansion. Then they
was laid away until the Grand Annual Masquerade Ball of the Order of the
Eastern Star, which is a kind of hen Masons, when she again gave us a
flash of what New York society ladies was riding their horse in. As a
matter of fact, Henrietta hates a horse like a rattlesnake, but she had
done her pioneer work for once and all.

"Every one was now laughing and sneering at the old-fashioned divided
skirt with which woman had endangered her life on a horse, and wond