A wave of interest in things equestrian followed the Horse Show for a time, too, and Joan was one of several who rode out two or three days a week with a riding-master on hired horses, feeling very picturesque and Kentuckian. She was determined never to be caught napping again as she had been at Longmeadow.
Effie May also signified her intention of joining the equestriennes, and actually appeared on two occasions in a habit which fitted her as its cover fits a pincushion. But her misery was so apparent, though silent, that Joan presently advised her to give it up.
"I guess I never was intended for a horseback rider," she admitted with a sigh. "No, I'm not exactly scared, dearie—who'd be afraid of old trained sheep like them? You ought to have seen the trotters Calloway used to drive! Nothing ever come too fast for Calloway. But somehow it's different when you're on top of 'em, with nothing to hold on by. And then those bones in front. It was something fierce!"
She exhibited to the puzzled Joan certain injuries to her person which made her efforts at equestrianism seem nothing short of heroic.
"But why not go without bones in front, as I do?"
Effie May grinned. "Ever see me without a corset, hon? And you never will! No woman of my weight should ever be seen in public in her natural figger, not even in her coffin. Say, Joan, promise me you won't let the undertaker lay me out without a corset on!"
Joan promised—of which promise more anon.
She herself shortly became the riding-master's best pupil, a fact in which her father took great pride.
"A matter of inheritance, doubtless," he said modestly. "As you know, Dollykins, I am a believer in the power of inheritance."
And though he declined himself to join in the exercise (possibly not wishing to put too great a strain upon the power of inheritance), his Christmas present to his daughter was a beautiful little gaited saddle-mare, especially selected, trained, and—such was his intimation—bred for her use by a horse-raising cousin in the heart of the Bluegrass.