“Not I!” declared Helen, her soft silks gathered into a spring-like mass of blue and white and blush pinks, turning to wave her hands, thus filled, from the doorway. “I’ll be an improved robber, not with a kit to steal, but a stolen Kit!”
Early the next morning the horses were at the door, Kit’s own horse, a fine-skinned, chestnut sorrel, and one that Miss Carrington had secured for Helen’s riding, a spirited black horse, high-headed, high-stepping, whose magnificent strength made a perfect pedestal for the girl’s blonde grace.
Helen came down the stairs in her golden-brown riding clothes, russet boots, trousers and full-skirted coat of russet-coloured cloth, wearing a silk beaver hat of the same colour, and russet gauntlets, her ivory-handled stock under one arm. Her hair glinted below her hat, brought down low and held by a net in golden masses above her high white collar and white cravat. Not everyone could have triumphed over this uniformity of tint, but it turned Helen into an autumnal sun-goddess, and Kit, buttoning his gloves as he waited for her, uttered a note of satisfaction on beholding her.
“You’re a sight, Helen!” he said, opening the door for her to pass.
“There are sights and sights, Kits! It doesn’t as a rule convey anything complimentary to call a person a sight, you know!” Helen said, gaily. She had decided that her rôle for that ride was to be youthful light-heartedness, that of the girl revelling in sunshine, air, and contentment.
Kit gave Helen a hand to mount, which she did not require, swung into his own saddle, and they were off with a wave of their stocks to Miss Carrington, who was smiling on them from the piazza.
“They are a glorious pair; Helen is right, and it does seem as though Kit must perceive the value of such a mate,” she thought.
After they had passed out of the city streets they trotted and galloped by turns eastward. The apple trees were in full blossom, and the orioles, those bits of flame amid the sweet delicacy of the springtime bloom, were singing their ecstatic warbling note.
“The May Day of the world and the heyday of youth, Kit! Aren’t we lucky to be so young, prosperous, well-mounted, healthy, and handsome among this ravishing beauty?” cried Helen. “I go into the world so much—the world in the other sense—that I often feel almost old; I see and learn so much that is not a part of youth. But when I come here and am out with you, a healthy, wholesome boy, though you are a year older than I am, it all falls away from me, and I feel like a nice little girl rolling her hoop!”