"It doesn't trouble me even a little bit, Jerome. It's just funny. I'm going to answer that letter right after breakfast, and I wish I could see my correspondent's face when she finds that her 'esquire' is one of her own sex. But I'll never dare let her guess I'm just a girl."
"Jes' a gurl! Jes' a gurl," sputtered Jerome. "Kyant yo' just give her a hint dat yo's a yo'ng lady and we-all's mistiss?"
"'Fraid not, Jerome. She will have to learn that when she comes out here to see Silver Star, if she really comes. I'd let her have Columbine if she were not sold. If that girl, who ever she is, could not ride Columbine she would fall out of a rocking chair. But Star is a darling and never cuts pranks unless Shashai sets him a bad example. I fear Shashai will never forget his colt tricks," and Shashai's mistress wagged her pretty head doubtfully.
"Shas'ee's all right, Miss Peggy. Don' yo' go fer ter 'line him. When I sees yo' two a kitin' way over de fiel's an' de fences, I says ter ma sef, Gawd-a-mighty, Je'ome, yo's got one pintedly hansome yo'ng mistess AN' she kin ride for fair."
"And that same young mistress is in a fair way to be spoiled by your flattery that is pretty certain," laughed Peggy, rising from the breakfast table and gathering up the pile of letters she had been reading.
"Huh, Huh. Spiled nothin'," protested Jerome as she disappeared into the adjoining library.
Seating herself at her very business-like desk she wrote in a clear, angular hand:
Severndale, Round Bay Station.
October 20, 19—
Mrs. G. F. Harold,
Wilmot Hall,
Annapolis, Md.
Dear Madam: