"I don't mope," returned Nan, "but there are other things I like to do. I don't like boys' games all the time, only sometimes. I don't like to go fishing because I hate squirming worms on hooks, and I feel sorry for poor gasping fish."
"Oh, but we have to have them for food," said Ashby.
"I know we do, but I'd rather not do the catching. I'll let you do that," she added laughing.
They were all on thoroughly good terms by this time and since the afternoon was not over, they took turns in riding, Ran showing himself so expert as to pick up his cap from the ground while going at full speed. He was able, too, to ride standing, bareback or any other way, winning great applause for his cow-boy acts.
"I believe I'll ask father to let us have our horses up here," he said. "It would be no end of comfort and if we had some kind of trap we could take you girls off on long drives."
"We have an old phaeton," said Nan; "it's rather dingy looking, but that is all that is the matter with it, and there is the sleigh. We don't need either since we sold the horses, but mother doesn't like to part with them for the small price we could get for them and she says maybe some day we can afford to keep a horse."
"We must surely see about having our horses here," repeated Ran, and that very night he wrote home to his father to make the request.
A week later the horses arrived and were stabled near-by. Polly Lewis was generous enough to send her mare to one of the girls once in a while and so many a long and delightful ride did the cousins have. Sometimes several of them would pile into the old phaeton and sometimes two would go horseback and the rest would drive. Strange to say, though Mary Lee was so much less impetuous than Nan, and fonder of boys' sports, she sat a horse less well and was never the graceful and fearless rider that Nan was, though many a girl might have envied even her good seat and steady hand.
There were other tourneys, too, when Randolph generally was victor and crowned Jean who was his special favorite, thus causing pangs of jealousy in Jack's ambitious heart. Nan, seeing this, resolved to do her best for Jack's sake and practiced so diligently that once Ran's successes rendering him careless, she actually did take the championship from him and to Jack's great delight, crowned this little sister, making a flowery speech as she did so.
Aunt Sarah smiled contemptuously at these performances which she called "fool nonsense," but since the children kept well, were not in bad company, and did not neglect their school duties, she did not forbid them their exciting plays. After the arrival of the horses belonging to the Gordon boys, Pete was not again expected to play the part of a curvetting steed, but was allowed to rest on his laurels.