Then a sudden, ear-splitting thunder-clap hurled her onto a shrieking discord.

She jumped up from the piano; she was horribly afraid of thunder-storms--mother wouldn't mind if she stopped till the storm was over. She longed to go and sit close to mother, to feel the protection of her presence; but, despite the general softening of her mood, she had maintained a certain stiffness toward the family. So she crouched on a sofa in the darkest corner of the room, hiding her eyes, stopping her ears.

Then a sudden thought brought her bolt upright. Gypsy! Tess had said Gypsy was afraid of thunder-storms--awfully afraid. And Gypsy was all alone in that big, gloomy barn--Tess blocks away at the Library.

She tried to hide amongst the cushions again, but visions of Gypsy, with her bright inquisitive eyes, her funny little petulances, her endearing cajoleries, kept rising before her. She felt a stab of remorse; that she could have let even the delights of reading and improvising compensate for separation from such a darling pony. She had been selfish, selfcentred. And now Gypsy was alone in that old barn, trembling and neighing...

Finally, unable to endure the picture longer, she crept out to the hall.

She could hear mother and Aunt Nettie in the sitting-room--she couldn't get an umbrella from the closet. So, without umbrella or hat, she stole out the front door. Above was a continuous network of flame as though someone were scratching immense matches all over the surface of heaven, but doggedly she ran on. The downpour caught her, but on she sped though rain and hail hammered her head, blinded her eyes, and drove her drenched garments against her flesh.

She found Gypsy huddled quivering and taut in a corner of the stall.

She put her arms round the satiny neck, and they mutely comforted each other. It was thus that Tess discovered them; she, too, had run to Gypsy though it had taken longer as she had farther to go; but she was not so wet as Missy, having borrowed an umbrella at the Library.

"_I_ didn't wait to get an umbrella," Missy couldn't forebear commenting, slightly slurring the truth.

Tess seemed a bit annoyed. "Well, you didn't HAVE to go out in the rain anyway. Guess I can be depended on to look out for my own pony, can't I?"

But Missy's tactful rejoinder that she'd only feared Tess mightn't be able to accomplish the longer distance, served to dissipate the shadow of jealousy. Before the summer storm had impetuously spent itself, the friends were crowded companionably in the feed-box, feeding the rea.s.sured Gypsy peppermint sticks--Tess had met Arthur Simpson on her way to the Library--and talking earnestly.

The earnest talk was born of an ill.u.s.tration Tess had seen in a magazine at the Library. It was a society story and the ill.u.s.tration showed the heroine in riding costume.

"She looked awfully swagger," related Tess. "Flicking her crop against her boot, and a derby hat and stock-collar and riding-breeches. I think breeches are a lot more swagger than habits."

"Do you think they're a little bit--indelicate?" ventured Missy, remembering her mother's recent invective against tomboys.

"Of course not!" denied Tess disdainfully. "Valerie Jones in Macon City wears 'em and she's awfully swell. Her father's a banker. She's in the thick of things at the Country Club. It's depa.s.se to ride side-saddle, anyway."

Missy was silent; even when she felt herself misunderstood by her family and maltreated, she had a bothersome conscience.

"There's no real cla.s.s to riding horseback," Tess went on, "unless you're up to date. You got to be up to date. Of course Cherryvale's slow, but that's no reason we've got to be slow, is it?"

"No-o," agreed Missy hesitantly. But she was emboldened to mention her father's discarded pepper-and-salt trousers. At the first she didn't intend really to appropriate them, but Tess caught up the idea enthusiastically. She immediately began making concrete plans and, soon, Missy caught her fervour. That picture of herself as a dashing, fearless horsewoman had come to life again.

When she got home, mother, looking worried, was waiting for her.

"Where on earth have you been? Look at that straggly hair! And that dress, fresh just this morning--limp as a dish-rag!"

Missy tried to explain, but the anxiety between mother's eyes deepened to lines of crossness.

"For heaven's sake! To go rushing off like that without a rain-coat or even an umbrella! And you pretend to be afraid of thunder-storms! Now, Missy, it isn't because you've ruined your dress or likely caught your death of cold--but to think you'd wilfully disobey me! What on earth AM I to do with you?"

She made Missy feel like an unregenerate sinner. And Missy liked her stinging, smarting sensations no better because she felt she didn't deserve them. That heavy sense of injustice somewhat deadened any p.r.i.c.ks of guilt when, later, she stealthily removed the pepper-and-salts from the upstairs store-closet.

But Aunt Nettie's eagle eyes chanced to see her. She went to Mrs.

Merriam.

"What do you suppose Missy wants of those old pepper-and-salt pants?"

"I don't know, Nettie. Why?"

"She's just sneaked 'em off to her room. When she saw me coming up the stairs, she scampered as if Satan was after her. What DO you suppose she wants of them?"

"I can't imagine," repeated Mrs. Merriam. "Maybe she hardly knows herself--girls that age are like a boiling tea-kettle; you know; their imagination keeps bubbling up and spilling over, and then disappears into vapour. I sometimes think we bother Missy too much with questions--she doesn't know the answers herself."

Mrs. Merriam was probably feeling the compunctions mothers often feel after they have scolded.

Aunt Nettie sniffed a little, but Missy wasn't questioned. And now the scene of our story may shift to a sunny morning, a few days later, and to the comparative seclusion of the sanitarium barn. There has been, for an hour or more, a suppressed sound of giggles, and Gypsy, sensing excitement in the air, stands with p.r.i.c.ked-up ears and bright, inquisitive eyes. Luckily there has been no intruder--just the three of them, Gypsy and Missy and Tess.

"You're wonderful--simply wonderful! It's simply too swagger for words!"

It was Tess speaking.

Missy gazed down at herself. It WAS swagger, she a.s.sured herself. It must be swagger--Tess said so. Almost as swagger, Tess a.s.severated, as the riding outfit worn by Miss Valerie Jones who was the swaggerest member of Macon City's swaggerest young set. Yet, despite her a.s.surance of swaggerness, she was conscious of a certain uneasiness. She knew she shouldn't feel embarra.s.sed; she should feel only swagger. But she couldn't help a sense of awkwardness, almost of distaste; her legs felt--and LOOKED--so queer! So conspicuous! The upper halves of them were clothed in two separate envelopments of pepper-and-salt material, gathered very full and puffy over the hips but drawn in tightly toward the knee in a particularly swagger fashion. Below the knee the swagger tight effect was sustained by a pair of long b.u.t.toned "leggings."

"You're sure these leggings look all right?" she demanded anxiously.

"Of course they look all right! They look fine!"

"I wish we had some boots," with a smothered sigh.

"Well, they don't ALWAYS wear boots. Lots of 'em in Macon City only wore puttees. And puttees are only a kind of leggings."

"They're so tight," complained the horsewoman. "My legs have got a lot fatter since--"

Thrusting out one of the mentioned members in a tentative kick, she was interrupted by the popping of an already overstrained b.u.t.ton.

"SEE!" she finished despondently. "I SAID they were too tight."

"You oughtn't to kick around that way," reproved Tess. "No wonder it popped off. Now, I'll have to hunt for a safety-pin--"

"I don't want a safety-pin!--I'd rather let it flop."

The horsewoman continued to survey herself dubiously, took in the bright scarlet sweater which formed the top part of her costume. The girls had first sought a more tailored variety of coat, but peres Merriam and O'Neill were both, selfishly, very large men; Tess had brilliantly bethought the sweater--the English always wore scarlet for hunting, anyway. Missy then had warmly applauded the inspiration, but now her warmth was literal rather than figurative; it was a hot day and the sweater was knitted of heavy wool. She fingered her stock collar--one of Mrs. O'Neill's guest towels--and tried to adjust her derby more securely.

"Your father has an awfully big head," she commented. "Oh, they always wear their hats way down over their ears." Then, a little vexed at this necessity for repeated rea.s.surance, Tess broke out irritably:

"If you don't want to wear the get-up, say so! I'LL wear it! I only let you wear it first trying to be nice to you!"

Then Missy, who had been genuinely moved by Tess's decision that the first wearing of the costume should make up for her chum's week of punishment, pulled herself together.

"Of course I want to wear it," she declared. "I think it's just fine of you to let me wear it first."

She spoke sincerely; yet, within the hour, she was plotting to return her friend's sacrifice with a sort of mean trick. Perhaps it was fit and just that the trick turned topsy-turvy on herself as it did. Yet the notion did not come to her in the guise of a trick on Tess. No; it came just as a daring, dashing, splendid feat in which she herself should triumphantly figure--she scarcely thought of Tess at all.

It came upon her, in all its dazzling possibilities, while she was cantering along the old road which runs back of Smith's woods. She and Tess had agreed it would be best, till they'd "broke in" Cherryvale to the novelty of breeches, to keep to unfrequented roads. But it was the inconspicuousness of the route, the lack of an admiring audience, which gave birth to Missy's startling Idea. Back in the barn she'd felt self-conscious. But now she was getting used to her exposed legs. And doing really splendidly on Dr. O'Neill's saddle. Sitting there astride, swaying in gentle rhythm with Gypsy's springing motion she began to feel truly dashing, supremely swagger. She seemed lifted out of herself, no longer timid, commonplace, unathletic Missy Merriam, but exalted into a sort of free-and-easy, Princess Royal of Swaggerdom. She began to wish someone might see her...

Then startling, compelling, tantalizing, came the Idea. Why not ride openly back into Cherryvale, right up Main Street, right by the Post Office? All those old loafers would see her who'd laughed the day she tumbled off of Ned. Well, they'd laugh the other way, now. And Arthur Simpson, too. Maybe she'd even ride into Pieker's store!--that certainly would surprise Arthur. True it was Tess he'd "dared," but of course he had not dreamed SHE, Missy, would ever take it up. He considered her unathletic--sort of ridiculous. Wouldn't it be great to "show" him? She visioned the amazement, the admiration, the respect, which would shine in his eyes as, insouciantly and yet with dash, she deftly manoeuvred Gypsy's reins and cantered right into the store!

Afterwards she admitted that a sort of madness must have seized her; yet, as she raced back toward the town, gently swaying in unison with her mount, her pepper-and-salt legs pressing the pony's sides with authority, she felt complacently, exultantly sane.