“I certainly should.”
“You see Sutro—I don’t know ’xactly how it was. But when I was as little as little, my father told Sutro ’at if he’d tend to me an’ not let anything bad ever happen to me, he’d pay Sutro money. Wages, it’s called. So they did it; an’ Sutro was my body-servant forever after that. Papa paid him every month, ’cause it wasn’t the Plunkett man’s money at all. An’ Sutro has saved it. An’ I don’t know. He showed me most of it ’at he hadn’t spended; an’ it does seem funny that folks’ll give you food an’ clothes an’ things just for it; but he says yes. An’ if I earn, an’ he helps me, don’t you see? Oh, I hope they will let me, don’t you?”
“I—hardly know. I wish you to be happy with all my heart; and so I mean that you shall succeed—if they are willing. But they are a proud family,—the very leading family of Old Knollsboro; and they may feel it—well, not just the thing for the little daughter of the house to teach even a ‘riding-school.’ But we’ll see. By the way, where would you like to hold your school? Tell me all that you have thought about it, please.”
“Why, on your race-course. Why not?” asked Steenie, brightly and innocently.
“Why, Steenie Calthorp! My papa’s race-track is my papa’s! He won’t let anybody, ’cept them he invites, go on it, not once at all. He says it’s private, for his own ’musement, an’ if folks want tracks let ’em have their own. He wouldn’t let other little girls, ’cept you an’ me, ride their ponies there, ever; would he, Mama?”
“I cannot answer for another, even your father, my dear. But I think that some fitting place could be found,” replied the mother, quietly.
Steenie looked up quickly. Her big blue eyes were filled with astonishment, and a pink flush stole deeper and deeper into her pretty face. Her native instinct, the instinct of a gentlewoman, told her that she had blundered in some way, yet she could not see how. If Judge Courtenay was her friend,—why, he was!—and that was the end of it. Why should he draw the line anywhere?
“Please, Mrs. Courtenay, was I ’truding then? Grandmother said I was never to do that. She said I had lived in a beau-tiful big, big place like Santa Felisa, an’ I was used to being mistress of everything; but I was to ’member that here, in this little bit o’ Old Knollsboro, I was only a little bit o’ girl. But if the dear Judge doesn’t want me to use his course, why I can find a place, somewhere, big enough. I guess maybe the blacksmith can tell me. He was a very nice man, too.”
Mrs. Courtenay watched the troubled little face grow bright and sunny again, and then she sent the children out to play; after which an elegant carriage was brought round, and a groom in livery assisted the lady into it, and lifted Beatrice to a place beside her. But Steenie needed no assistance, and was quite contented when the Judge took the empty seat next her, and she heard the order given, “To Madam Calthorp’s, High Street.”
It was a gay and happy party, and they carried their own good cheer with them into the care-shadowed home which they entered,—the greetings of the elders being even more cordial and sympathetic than ever, could that have seemed possible.