"Well, Fay, I think that's about enough for one lesson. Down you get."
"Just once more round the park, father," was the pleading rejoinder. "I'm quite beginning to feel at home on Tricksie now."
Laurence gave way, and Tricksie darted off, perhaps a trifle too vivaciously for a learner of the noble art of horsemanship. But the girl kept her seat bravely, and the conceded scamper being brought to a close, she came round to where Laurence awaited, and slid from her saddle.
"Father, I won't have you call it 'lessons' any more," she cried. "I can ride now; can ride—do you hear!"
"Oh, can you?" laughed Laurence, thinking what a pretty picture she made standing there with the full light of the setting sun tinting the golden waves of her hair, playing upon the great dark eyes. Indeed, he owned inwardly to a weakness, a soft place as strange as it was unwonted, for this child of his. Yet she was something more than a child now, quite a tall slip of a girl at the angular age; but there was nothing awkward or angular even then about Fay Stanninghame.
"Well, hitch up the pony to the rail there," he went on. "Those two scamps can take him in when they are tired of careering around and whooping like Sioux on the war-path."
The two boys, also happy in the possession of a pony apiece, had lost no time either in learning to ride it.
"There's no part of a fool about either of those chaps," said Laurence, more to himself than to the girl, as he watched the two circling at full gallop in and out among the trees, absolutely devoid of fear. "Let's stroll a little, Fay; or would you rather go in?"
"Of course, I wouldn't," linking her arm in his. "Father, are we very rich now?"
"Oh, pretty warm. Think it fun, eh, child?"