Sometimes she and Miss Blake took longer trips into the country, and then the governess had to be constant in her warnings to her against her reckless fashion of riding. Again and again she spoke, and Nan always meant to take heed and then always forgot, and fell back into her old way once more.
"I can't resist such a coast as that was," she would plead. "And if I got off for every old man who thinks he has the right to the road I'd be dismounting all the while."
"I beg you not to take such risks," Miss Blake would rejoin. "It simply spoils my ride for me, Nan, to see you so reckless. Such head-long wheeling has nothing to recommend it. It is neither expert nor admirable. When you fling along so blindly you are merely doing a foolish, heedless thing and running serious risks. I am sure you will come to grief some day."
"Don't you worry! I am as much at home in my saddle as I would be in a rocking-chair. See me ride without touching the handle-bars!"
And presently she would lose all recollection of her good resolve, and go hurling on at a break-neck speed in the van of some skittish horse, or slowly zig-zag ahead in the path of some stolid coachman, causing him to anathematize all wheelmen in general and this especially provoking specimen in particular, while her watching companion held her breath in trembling alarm.
At last Miss Blake told Nan decidedly that unless she were willing to ride properly she must give it up altogether.
"I cannot stand this strain any longer," she said, in real distress.
She and Mrs. Newton and the girl herself were taking their first ride in company since the early summer. Now it was autumn, and the leaves were turning. Mrs. Newton had just come back from the country, and Nan was eager to display her skill, which she felt had improved not a little since their neighbor's departure.
The fresh wind, keen and bracing as it came from the sea, filled her with a sense of new strength and energy, and she felt the effect of the invigorating atmosphere in her blood. A scent of burning leaves was in the air, and the indescribable suggestion of coming winter gayety. To-day the road was crowded with carriages. They thronged the fashionable drive, and lent it a peculiarly animated aspect. Equestrians and wheelmen were also out in full force, and the presence of so many people set Nan's blood tingling with excitement. She tossed her head back, as the governess uttered her decision, with the impatience of a mettlesome horse.
"Now remember!" warned Miss Blake.