"Nonsense! You only had a sprained ankle."
"Yes, but it was a perfectly odious sprain. Nobody knows how I suffered. And to think it was all Bernie's fault!"
"How so? You fell off a horse."
"I did not," indignantly declared Miss Warren. "I was thrown, hurled, flung, violently projected, and then I was frightfully trampled by a snorting steed."
Norvin laughed heartily at this, for he knew the rickety old family horse very well by sight, and the picture she conjured up was amusing.
"How do you manage to blame it on Bernie?" he inquired.
"Well, he forbade me to ride horseback, so of course I had to do it."
"Oh, I see."
"I fixed up a perfectly ravishing habit. I couldn't ask Bernie to buy me one, since he refused to let me ride, so I made a skirt out of our grand-piano cover—it was miles long, and a darling shade of green. When it came to a hat I was stumped until I thought of Bernie's silk one. No mother ever loved a child as he loved that hat, you know. I twisted his evening scarf around it, and the effect was really stunning—it floated beautifully. Babylon and I formed a picture, I can tell you. I call the horse Babylon because he's such an old ruin. But I don't believe any one ever rode him before; he didn't seem to know what it was all about. He was very bony, too, and he stuck out in places. I suppose we would have gotten along all right if I hadn't tried to make him prance. He wouldn't do it, so I jabbed him."
"Jabbed him?"