“That brown-stone house on the corner, the right side of the street, is Madam Mearsom’s school, where I shall place you at the beginning of the fall term. It is the most fashionable and exclusive of all our private schools and it is where your mother was trained. I shall take you to call upon her soon, and have already entered your name upon her list. Commonly, a pupil has to be enrolled at least two years before there is a vacancy in her limited classes; but Madam has made an exception in your favor because, as she admitted, she has always had the honor of educating the Waldrons. I hope you will appreciate the concession and never forget the high ideals you must maintain.”
“I will try, Cousin Margaret,” dutifully replied “little Captain,” though feeling that the “Waldrons and their ideals” were a burden too heavy for her to bear.
“Now we must turn aside, into a cross street, to see my dressmaker. I don’t know why such persons always will live on cross streets! It’s most annoying, they are so much narrower and confusing. Notice, child, how our New York is laid out. As simple as a checker-board—from First Street up, all the cross streets go by count, and all the Avenues in the same order, until you come to that far-away East Side where they are lettered. But neither you nor I will ever have more to do with Avenues A, B, or C, than to know they do exist and are marked on the city map.”
The coachman drew up before a house which seemed to be familiar both to him and the blacks, which settled down into a sleepy attitude, quite unfitting such aristocratic beasts but that indicated their prescience of a long wait. The Madam was helped from the carriage and had to pause a moment, as always when she made any physical exertion, before ascending the steps. Then she passed up them with the ease of a much younger woman and was promptly admitted.
It was there that disaster fell. Buster had been growing more and more restive. Jessica’s unfamiliar skirt fretted his delicate skin; the saddle was not his old one fitting comfortably to his back; this enforced pacing, pacing, was intolerable to a broncho of spirit; this standing quiet was more annoying even than the pacing had been; and when a honking automobile came dashing around the corner of the block, almost into his very face, he cast one terrified, reproachful glance into his rider’s eyes and took the bit in his teeth.
Oh! but he traveled then! Ephraim pursuing and using most objectionable language to the hack he bestrode.
“Oh! you vile beast! Call yourself a horse, do you? well, you don’t know what a horse is, I tell you! Get up! Get on! Vamos! Speed! Even old Stiffleg, that deserted me on the streets of Los Angeles, had more fire in him than you, poor old worn-out New Yorker! Vamos! V-A-M-O-S!”
In vain. Jessica had vanished. The broncho, unused to city sights and sounds, would not be checked nor swerved from the mad course he had elected to follow. The most she could do was to keep her seat upon his back and this she managed, even though hampered by that detestable skirt and that slippery new saddle. Barebacked, without this handicap, how she would have reveled in that mad ride! even now, knowing that her Cousin Margaret’s dire displeasure awaited her return, she did revel in it. Almost she could fancy herself tearing across the plain, where no obstruction offered and the soft sod was a cushioned pathway for Buster’s hoofs, and for a moment closing her eyes, she let her fancy carry her back to Paraiso d’Oro; and Buster—whither he would.
But she opened them again in terror, as a wild scream came from beneath those hoofs and the broncho was so suddenly checked that he almost threw her off backward.
The inevitable had happened on that crowded thoroughfare into which he had now turned. She and he had been ignorantly reckless of consequences and most untoward consequences had resulted.