Jessica sat down close to her faithful friend but she couldn’t repress her amusement, the frontiersman was so uncomfortable in his new attire, yet so full of suppressed excitement. With another smile she demanded:
“Do explain, Ephy. If you wanted new clothes why didn’t you get Mr. Hale, or somebody who knows what’s correct, to advise you? Even I——”
“Hold on, ‘Captain.’ Come over to that window, yonder!”
With his hat in his hand, he led the way across the room and pointing outward, demanded:
“Do you see that there bay horse, that boy is leading up and down? ‘All saddled and bridled and fit for a Prince’?”
“Of course I see him. What a perfectly beautiful animal! See him, now! What knee action! What a neck! What shapely legs! Whoever owns that creature knows the ‘points’ of a fine horse. Is it somebody’s you know?”
“I ’low it is. I ’low she does—know points. She’d ought to, being as she was raised on ’em, so to speak; and if you hadn’t recognized them I’d have been plumb disappointed. For the creatur’s yours! Arrived last night, overland, straight from the ‘boys’ at Sobrante, named ‘Sobrante’ himself, and waiting this minute for his new owner and mistress to try his paces with me as ‘attendant.’ That’s why this pesky livery. That’s why I’ve come. That’s why you go ask your Madame, to once, if you can’t go for a canter in the Park if I’ll wager my own neck I’ll fetch you home safe, any time she names!”
Jessica’s cry of delight was almost a scream. So “unladylike,” in fact, that a caller near by elevated her eyebrows and remarked:
“What astonishing things! That groom, that ill-bred girl, I am surprised at Madame.”
“Oh! that’s nothing. She’s our wild westerner, you know. One may expect any sort of behavior from her,” replied the young lady addressed, a “Con” of the most decided sort, and an admiring follower of the handsome Helen.