This was not the last of their rides together. The unexpected understanding of this girl, whose lot in life Joan had long secretly envied, broke down the artificial barriers between them, and paved the way for a real and lasting friendship. Between them they settled many problems of the universe, while Dobbin and Pegasus respectively trotted and singlefooted about the parks or along a road where the Ohio swept, swollen with the winter's snows, almost on a level with them, overlooked by splendid cliffs where the city's rich have been wise enough to build homes that would do credit to the château country of France.
Sometimes Emily took her into one of these houses for a cup of tea, occasions which filled Effie May with a candid gratification; for hitherto the Carmichael circle had remained impregnable to her siege.
"It certainly was a good idea of yours, getting the child that horse!" she commented to her husband. "There's something genteel about a riding-horse—more so than a limousine, though I'm sure I can't see why. Heaven knows it's cheaper! But even that old plug the Carmichael girl rides has a kind of air about it."
"Horses," replied the Major sententiously, "are the only aristocrats left in the modern world."
Effie May presently suggested to Archie that he purchase himself a horse and try riding, since he was so fond of exercise. But Archie put the tempting idea away from him. What time had he for the diversions of the idle? Business before pleasure! He had recently, and for reasons that were a little vague in his own mind, decided to become rich.
Joan was so preoccupied with her new friendship that she had rather neglected the boxing matches of late, which presently languished. The Major missed the stimulating presence of a young feminine audience. So that Archie spent no more glorious half-hours over a tea-table.
But he did not complain. It was something to know that he had presented his lady with the thing her heart most craved. He could, had he so chosen, have tagged the unconscious Miss Carmichael with a card such as sometimes came to Joan in modest boxes of flowers, bearing the inscription: "From a Friend."
CHAPTER XXVIII
Miss Carmichael presently invited Joan to a meeting of an organization which she had occasionally referred to as "The Jabberwocks" though it had been christened by a more imposing name; a group of girls and young married women who met fortnightly for the apparent purpose of talking all at once about anything that came into their heads. And as a great deal came into their heads, the bewildered guest decided that its present name was aptly chosen. However, though the talk, disconnected and inconclusive, came out for the most part "at that same door wherein it went," it was to Joan like hearing a native tongue spoken in a foreign land. She listened eagerly. Ideas came up for discussion, books, plays, music, even politics, had a turn; instead of the usual, "Who is asked to So-and-so's dinner?" and "What are you going to wear at such-and-such an affair?" which she had begun to consider the chronic conversation of her sex and age.