It was interesting to sit and look at Grandma Shears and to hear her recount the Oriental adventures of her father, the sea captain. But Tess gave Missy little chance to do this. Tess had heard and re-heard the adventures to the point of boredom and custom had caused her to take her grandmother's strange garb as a matter of course; Tess's was a nature which craved—and generally achieved—novelty.
Just now her particular interest veered toward athleticism; she had recently returned from a visit to Macon City and brimmed with colourful tales of its “Country Club” life—swimming, golf, tennis, horseback riding, and so forth. These pursuits she straightway set out to introduce into drowsy, behind-the-times Cherryvale. But in almost every direction she encountered difficulties: there was in Cherryvale no place to swim except muddy Bull Creek—and the girls' mothers unanimously vetoed that; and there were no links for golf; and the girls themselves didn't enthuse greatly over tennis those broiling afternoons. So Tess centred on horseback riding, deciding it was the “classiest” sport, after all. But the old Neds and Nellies of the town, accustomed leisurely to transport their various family surreys, did not metamorphose into hackneys of such spirit and dash as filled Tess's dreams.
Even so, these steeds were formidable enough to Missy. She feared she wasn't very athletic. That was an afternoon of frightful chagrin when she came walking back into Cherryvale, ignominiously following Dr. O'Neill's Ben. Old Ben, who was lame in his left hind foot, had a curious gait, like a sort of grotesque turkey trot. Missy outwardly attributed her inability to keep her seat to Ben's peculiar rocking motion, but in her heart she knew it was simply because she was afraid. What she was afraid of she couldn't have specified. Not of old Ben surely, for she knew him to be the gentlest of horses. When she stood on the ground beside him, stroking his shaggy, uncurried flanks or feeding him bits of sugar, she felt not the slightest fear. Yet the minute she climbed up into the saddle she sickened under the grip of some increasingly heart-stilling panic. Even before Ben started forward; so it wasn't Ben's rocking, lop-sided gait that was really at the bottom of her fear—it only accentuated it. Why was she afraid of Ben up there in the saddle while not in the least afraid when standing beside him? Fear was very strange. Did everybody harbour some secret, absurd, unreasonable fear? No, Tess didn't; Tess wasn't afraid of anything. Tess was cantering along on rawboned Nellie in beautiful unconcern. Missy admired and envied her dreadfully.
Her sense of her own shortcomings became all the more poignant when the little cavalcade, with Missy still ignominiously footing it in the rear, had to pass the group of loafers in front of the Post Office. The loafers called out rude, bantering comments, and Missy burned with shame.
Then Arthur Simpson appeared in Pieker's doorway next door and grinned.
“Hello! Some steed!” he greeted Tess. “Dare you to ride her in!”
“Not to-day, thanks,” retorted Tess insouciantly—that was another quality Missy envied in her friend, her unfailing insouciance. “Wait till I get my new pony next week, and then I'll take you up!”
“All right. The dare holds good.” Then Arthur turned his grin to Missy. “What's the matter with YOU? Charger get out of hand?”
The loafers in front of the Post Office took time from their chewing and spitting to guffaw. Missy could have died of mortification.
“Want a lift?” asked Arthur, moving forward.