"I should have come here, if I'd expected to drive," she said. "But I thought maybe your horse wa'n't much used to women, and I kind o' dreaded to be the first one to try him with a saddle."
Mrs. Wilson put down her hook again, and leaned back in her chair. She looked from her husband to Lucindy, without speaking. But Lucindy went on, with the innocent simplicity of a happy child.
"You know I was always possessed to ride horseback," she said, addressing herself to Lothrop, "and father never would let me. And now he ain't here, I mean to try it, and see if 'tain't full as nice as I thought."
"Lucindy!" burst forth Mrs. Wilson, explosively, "ain't you goin' to pay no respect to your father's memory?"
Lucindy turned to her, smiling still, but with a hint of quizzical shrewdness about her mouth.
"I guess I ain't called on to put myself out," she said, simply, yet not irreverently. "Father had his way in pretty much everything while he was alive. I always made up my mind if I should outlive him, I'd have all the things I wanted then, when young folks want the most. And you know then I couldn't get 'em."
"Well!" said Mrs. Wilson. Her tone spoke volumes of conflicting commentary.
"You got a saddle?" asked Lucindy, turning to her cousin. "I thought I remembered you had one laid away, up attic. I suppose you'd just as soon I'd take it?"
He was neither shocked nor amused. He had been looking at her very sadly, as one who read in every word the entire tragedy of a repressed and lonely life.
"Yes, we have, Lucindy," he said, gently, quieting his wife by a motion of the hand, "but 'tain't what you think. It's a man's saddle. You'd have to set straddle.