enclosure, and the cinder track were put into shape for the season.
The girls buzzed outside the Hall like bees about a hive at
swarming time.

Grace Mason took up horseback riding again. Her father and mother
were still at their town house, but her brother Walter and his
tutor were at the summer home a short distance from Lakeview Hall,
where he was "plugging," as he called it, for the entrance
examinations of a college preparatory school in the fall.

Walter had been unable to be much with his sister since the
holidays; but now he came for Grace three times a week to accompany
her on her rides.

He bestrode his own big black horse, Prince, leading the speckled
pony Grace was to ride. The pony was a nervous, excitable creature.
Rhoda, seeing it for the first time, asked Nan:

"Is Grace Mason used to that creature?"

"I don't know. I never saw it before. But the pony can't be any
worse than the big black horse that Walter rides."

"Why, what is the matter with him?" asked the Western girl.

"Prince is so high-spirited. You never know what he is going to
do."

"I guess the black horse is spirited; but that is not a fault,"
Rhoda said. "He looks all right to me. But that little flea-bitten