Carmichael to distinguish the features, was a thorough dandy of the
saddle. No slouching garb of exigence and comfort this, but a pretty
display of doeskin gaiter, varnished boot, and smart riding-breeches. The
lad—he could not have been, Miss Carmichael thought, more than twenty—was
tanned a splendid color not unlike the bloomy shading on a nasturtium. And
when the doughty horseman made out the girl standing in the doorway, he
smiled with a lack of formality not suggested by the town-cut of his
trappings. Throwing the reins over the neck of the horse with the real
Western fling, he slid from the saddle in a trice, and—Mary Carmichael
experienced something of the gasping horror of a shocked old lady as she
made out two splendid braids of thick, black hair. Her doughty cavalier
was no cavalier at all, but a surprisingly handsome young woman.

Miss Carmichael gasped a little even as she extended her hand, for the
masquerader had pulled off her gauntlet and held out hers as if she was
conferring the freedom of the wilderness. It was impossible for a homesick
girl not to respond to such heartiness, though it was with difficulty at
first that Mary kept her eyes on the girl’s face. Curiosity, agreeably
piqued, urged her to take another glimpse of the riding clothes that this
young woman wore with such supreme unconcern.

Now, "in the East" Mary Carmichael had not been in the habit of meeting
black-haired goddesses who rode astride and whose assurance of the
pleasure of meeting her made her as self-conscious as on her first day at
dancing-school; and though she tried to prove her cosmopolitanism by not
betraying this, the attempt was rather a failure.

"Are you surprised that I did not wait for an introduction?" the girl in
the riding clothes asked, noticing Mary’s evident uneasiness; "but you
don’t know how good it is to see a girl. I’m so tired of spurs and