"Every one to his taste!" was Kitty's airy rejoinder.
"You can make up your mind that this picnic won't be like any other you ever attended," Alec assured them. "Knight has a scheme up his sleeve that will bear watching. I wonder, Blue Bonnet, if Mrs. Clyde would mind letting us take coffee?"
Blue Bonnet reflected. "To-morrow is Sunday and we're privileged to have it for breakfast. If we have it to-day instead I'm sure she won't object. What else shall we take?"
"Only some bread, some lump sugar and a tin of milk, please," said Alec modestly.
Amanda gave a sudden exclamation of joy. "Then we won't be back to lunch,—oh, Blue Bonnet, that lets us out to-day!"
They fell upon each other rapturously.
"I think we are the ones who should rejoice," said Kitty; but her remark met with the silent scorn it deserved.
They mustered a troop of twelve, all mounted, for Knight's picnic. Riding by twos, they cantered decorously as long as the eyes of their elders followed their course; but when a turn in the road freed them from observation, there was a spurring and an urging of the wiry ponies, and away they went, recking little of the grade whether up or down.
It became a game of follow-my-leader, with Knight and Blue Bonnet heading the procession and putting their horses through a performance that would have lamed anything but a Western cow-pony. Knight finally led the way to one of the "race-paths" that abound in the hilly regions of Texas, and there began a tournament that for years lived in Sarah's memory as the most reckless exhibition of daring ever seen outside a circus-ring.
"Who made this race-track?" she asked Knight in one of the infrequent pauses in the performance.