Bob backed her sturdy cob out from between two restless companions, and with much laughter and whispering and many injunctions to hurry and to be “awfully still,” the three conspirators mounted and walked their horses quietly down the drive.
“My stirrups seem a lot too long,” Betty whispered softly, as they passed down the avenue, dusky with the shadows of tall elms. “Whoa, Tony! Wait just a minute, girls. Why—oh, Bob, Madeline,—I’ve got the wrong horse. Somebody must have changed them around. This is Lady.”
Whether it was Betty’s nervous clutch on the reins as she made this dire discovery and remembered Lady’s antics on the ferry-boat, or whether the saucy little breeze which chose that moment to stir the elm branches and set the shadows dancing on the white road, was responsible, is a matter of doubt. At any rate Lady jerked back her pretty head impatiently, as if in answer to her name, shivered daintily, reared, and ran. She dodged cat-like, between Bob and Madeline and out through the narrow gateway, turned sharply to the right, away from Harding, and galloped off up the level road that lay white in the moonlight, between the Golf Club and a pine wood half a mile away.
Betty had presence of mind enough to dig her knees into Lady’s sides, and so managed somehow, in spite of her mis-fit stirrups, to stay on at the gate. She tugged hard at the reins as Lady flew along, and murmured soothing words into Lady’s quivering ears. But it wasn’t any use. Betty had wondered sometimes how it felt to be run away with. Now she knew. It felt like a rush of cold wind that made you dizzy and faint. You thought of all sorts of funny little things that happened to you ages ago. You wondered who would plan Jessica’s costumes if anything happened to you. You wished you weren’t on so many committees; it would bother Marie so to appoint some one in your place. You made a neat little list of those committees in your mind. Then you got to the pine wood, and something did happen, for Lady went on alone.
Madeline, straining her eyes at the gateway, waiting for Bob and Mr. Ware to come, couldn’t see that.
“She was still on the last I could see,” she told them huskily, and Mr. Ware whipped his horse into a run and rushed after Lady.
Madeline looked despairingly at Bob. “Let’s go too,” she said. “I can’t stand it to wait here.”
“All right.”
They rode fast, but it seemed ages before they got to the pines. Mr. Ware was galloping far ahead of them.
“If she’s gone so far she’ll slow up gradually on that long hill,” suggested Bob, trying to speak cheerfully.