II.

Bring forth the horse!
_Byron_.


Being ready to start, Esmeralda, the question now arises: "Is a
riding school," as the girl asked about the new French play, "a
place to which one can take her mother?" Little girls too young
to dress themselves should be attended by their mothers or by
their maids, but an older girl no more needs guardianship at
riding-school than at any other place at which she receives
instruction, and there is no more reason why her mother should
follow her into the ring than into the class-room.

Her presence, even if she preserve absolute silence, will
probably embarrass both teacher and pupil, and although her own
children may not be affected by it, it will be decidedly
troublesome to the children of other mothers.

If, instead of being quiet, she talk, and it is the nature of the
mother who accompanies her daughter to riding-school to talk
volubly and loudly, she will become a nuisance, and even a source
of actual danger, by distracting the attention of the master from
his pupils, and the attention of the pupils from their horses, to
say nothing of the possibility that some of her pretty, ladylike