CHAPTER XXI.
After supper, when Barbara came down dressed for riding and calmly told Robert she was ready, Mistress Mehitable gasped, and looked at Glenowen, expecting that he would meet the emergency by making a third. As he seemed unconscious of the need of action, she shot an appealing glance at Doctor Jim and Doctor John in turn. But they only grinned inscrutably. Then she lifted her hands slightly and let them drop into her lap, as if to say, "Bear witness, Heaven, that I am helpless!" and thus she stifled the voice of protest in her bosom. She had given Barbara freedom, and the responsibility that goes with freedom; and she would not take back the gift. But it was one of the notable victories of Mistress Mehitable's career, when she forced herself to sit in smiling acquiescence while Barbara flew full in the face of all convention. Amos, meanwhile, had brought the horses to the door; and when the two young riders were gone, the hoof-beats sounding in slow cadence down the drive, Glenowen said to her, with an understanding smile, "You did right, sweet lady. 'Tis a filly, that, to be ridden without the curb. Give her her head, and you'll have no great trouble!"
"I feel sure you are right, Mr. Glenowen," said Mistress Mehitable, sweetly. "But you may well believe it was a hard lesson for me, a Ladd of Connecticut, to learn. And I fear I have not more than half learned it yet!"
"You can learn anything you have a mind to, Mehitable," said Doctor Jim, with emphasis, "in the time it would take another woman to learn the A, B, C of it!"
Neither Barbara nor Robert spoke till the horses emerged upon the highway. Then Barbara cried:
"Quick! Quick! I want the wind in my face!"
With two miles of good road before them, they set their faces to the night breeze and their horses to the run, and raced madly down the moonlight, their shadows dancing long and black before them. The saddle-leathers creaked a low, exhilarating music, and the galloping swung like a pulse, and the roadside fence and shrubs fled by, and the world was white in the moonlight. And still there was no speech, save a soft word now and then to the rejoicing horses, whose ears turned back for it sympathetically from time to time.
At length they came to rougher ground, and slowed to a gentle canter. Then Robert noticed a narrow wood-road turning off to the right, vaulted over with lofty trees, and mystical with moon-shadows.
"Where does that road go, my lady?" he inquired.
"Where we are going!" answered Barbara, turning into it at a walk. Then, as if she thought the answer too whimsical, she continued, "It will take us back to the village by a longer and more beautiful way!"