“I will lead him past for you,” said Janice, without showing the dislike for the strange girl which she could not help feeling. “Don’t hold the reins so tight. You frighten him.”
“Nonsense! who told you so much, Miss?” responded this very unpleasant person, pertly enough.
“There! loosen the reins. It will calm him. A horse can feel the nervousness or fear of its driver through the reins—it is so. Whoa, boy! be good now.”
She patted and soothed the creature. He soon began to nuzzle her hand and rub against her shoulder—which wasn’t altogether a welcome sign of affection, for the poor animal had champed his bit until strings of froth were dripping from it.
“If you don’t know any more about a horse than you do about an auto, I expect you’ll have me in the ditch after all,” said the girl in the cart, with a hard laugh.
But she had relaxed the reins and Janice was quietly leading the horse along the road, keeping between him and the shiny car. Aunt ’Mira could not keep her eyes off that plume on the stranger’s hat. Indeed, the entire outfit was like some of those the good lady expected to see in the store windows at Middletown; only this one was displayed to much better advantage.
Janice leaped out of her car and ran toward the frightened horse—(see page [79])
The girl in the cart certainly was dressed in the height of fashion. The skirt of the dress she wore was so tight that by no possibility could she have descended from the cart in a hurry. Had the frightened horse really backed the cart into the ditch she would have had to go with it!
She stared now at Aunt ’Mira quite as hard as Aunt ’Mira stared at her. The large lady was rather a sight, it must be admitted; but as a choice between the two exhibitions of feminine vanity, it must be said that Aunt ’Mira was to be preferred. The strange girl’s gown was far from modest.