64 IN THE IilDIXG-SCHOOL. 



V. 



— Pad, pad, pad ! like a thing that was mad, 

 My chestnut broke away. 



Thornbury. 



iSMERALDA was puzzled when she re- 

 turned from her first riding party. 

 In the morning, looking very pretty 

 in her borrowed riding habit, her 

 English hat with the hunting guard made ne- 

 cessary by the Back Bay breezes, her brown 

 gauntlets, and the one scarlet carnation in her 

 button-hole, she drove to the riding-school, 

 where she had agreed to meet Theodore and 

 her other friends, not like Mrs. Gilpin, lest all 

 should say that she was proud, but because her 

 master had promised to lend her one of the 

 school horses, to put her in the saddle and to 

 adjust her stirrup, and because she secretly felt 

 that she would better give herself every possi- 

 ble advantage in what, as it came nearer, assumed 

 the aspect of a trial rather than a pleasure. 

 Beholding Ronald, the promised horse, se- 



