"She might at least have thanked me for getting her out of that scrape."
"Was that your idea?" said Lanigan.
"Of course it was," said the young woman: "if I hadn't shown her how to make the horse back, she would have pulled her arms out for nothing. It is easy to see that she does not know anything about managing horses."
Lanigan laughed outright.
"I would advise you not to say that to her," he said.
"I would as soon say it to her as not," said Ida; "somebody ought to do it. Why, if that horse had shied towards me instead of away from me when I jumped from that tree, I might have been very much hurt."
Lanigan laughed again, but this time inwardly.
"Do you like yellow flowers, Miss Mayberry?" said he. "The largest wild coreopsis I ever saw grows in this region. I noticed some in a field we just passed. Shall I gather a few for you?"
"I am very fond of that flower," said Ida; and Mr. Beam declaring that if she would step a little way with him he would show her a whole field of them, the two walked up the road.
Walter Lodloe had been gazing with some dissatisfaction at the departing phaeton. His mind was getting into a condition which made it unpleasant for him to see people take Mrs. Cristie away from him. He now turned and looked at the baby-carriage, in which the infant Douglas was sitting up, endeavoring by various noises to attract attention to himself. Lodloe pulled the vehicle into the road, and, finding that the motion quieted its occupant, he began slowly to push it towards the Squirrel Inn. When Walter Lodloe turned into the open space about the inn he met Mr. Tippengray with a book in his hand.