Hannah had been clearing the table with her lips shut tight. Hannah is an old and privileged servant and has a most unfortunate habit of speaking her mind. So now she stopped beside Tish.
"You take my advice and go, Miss Tish," she said. "If you ride a horse round some and get an appetite, you'll go down on your knees and apologize to your Maker for the stuff we've been eating the last four weeks." She turned to Charlie Sands, and positively her chin was quivering. "I'm a healthy woman," she said, "and I work hard and need good nourishing food. When it's come to a point where I eat the cat's meat and let it go hungry," she said, "it's time either I lost my appetite or Miss Tish went away."
Well, Tish dismissed Hannah haughtily from the room, and the conversation went on. None of us had been far West, although Tish has a sister-in-law in Toledo, Ohio. But owing to a quarrel over a pair of andirons that had been in the family for a time, she had never visited her.
"You'll like it, all of you," Charlie Sands said as we waited for the baked apples. "Once get started with a good horse between your knees, and—"
"I hope," Tish interrupted him, "that you do not think we are going to ride astride!"
"I'm darned sure of it."
That was Charlie Sands's way of talking. He does not mean to be rude, and he is really a young man of splendid character. But, as Tish says, contact with the world, although it has not spoiled him, has roughened his speech.
"You see," he explained, "there are places out there where the horses have to climb like goats. It's only fair to them to distribute your weight equally. A side saddle is likely to turn and drop you a mile or two down a crack."
Aggie went rather white and sneezed violently.
But Tish looked thoughtful. "It sounds reasonable," she said. "I've felt for a long time that I'd be glad to discard skirts. Skirts," she said, "are badges of servitude, survivals of the harem, reminders of a time when nothing was expected of women but parasitic leisure."