broiling afternoons. So Tess centred on horseback riding, deciding
it was the "classiest" sport, after all. But the old Neds and
Nellies of the town, accustomed leisurely to transport their various
family surreys, did not metamorphose into hackneys of such spirit
and dash as filled Tess's dreams.

Even so, these steeds were formidable enough to Missy. She feared
she wasn't very athletic. That was an afternoon of frightful chagrin
when she came walking back into Cherryvale, ignominiously following
Dr. O'Neill's Ben. Old Ben, who was lame in his left hind foot, had
a curious gait, like a sort of grotesque turkey trot. Missy
outwardly attributed her inability to keep her seat to Ben's
peculiar rocking motion, but in her heart she knew it was simply
because she was afraid. What she was afraid of she couldn't have
specified. Not of old Ben surely, for she knew him to be the
gentlest of horses. When she stood on the ground beside him,
stroking his shaggy, uncurried flanks or feeding him bits of sugar,
she felt not the slightest fear. Yet the minute she climbed up into
the saddle she sickened under the grip of some increasingly heart-
stilling panic. Even before Ben started forward; so it wasn't Ben's
rocking, lop-sided gait that was really at the bottom of her fear--
it only accentuated it. Why was she afraid of Ben up there in the
saddle while not in the least afraid when standing beside him? Fear
was very strange. Did everybody harbour some secret, absurd,
unreasonable fear? No, Tess didn't; Tess wasn't afraid of anything.
Tess was cantering along on rawboned Nellie in beautiful unconcern.
Missy admired and envied her dreadfully.

Her sense of her own shortcomings became all the more poignant when
the little cavalcade, with Missy still ignominiously footing it in