By the time Mrs. Dryer came, also, Effie had accepted the invitation to drive and “gone for her things,” although, as the former smilingly explained to George, “the Dorcas Society was to meet that afternoon, and Euphemia would be very much missed.”
And he had calmly replied,
“I should think likely she might. I never saw a young lady who seemed to be more of a general favorite. She’s a kind of sunbeam.”
“How poetical you are!” exclaimed Mrs. Dryer. “I see you have one of Mr. Runner’s horses. A bad sort of a man, they say.”
“Good judge of horses, though,” replied George. “It’s a pity so many good men don’t seem to know what a horse is.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Dryer, “but there’s always seemed to me to be a great deal of wickedness about horses.”
“There she comes,” was Brayton’s next remark, and it referred to the rustle of Effie’s dress on the stairs, not to any preposterous action on the part of Runner’s fast mare at the gate.
Now it happened that George Brayton had been a lover of horses from his youth up, and many a pleasant hour and mile he had passed behind his four-footed favorites, but his memory failed to bring him up the ghost of a more enjoyable drive than he took that afternoon.
Such a guide was Effie Dryer!
She knew just where to go, and her “driver” turned into highways and byways, most submissively, at her slightest bidding.