"Will you sew the button on for me, Mollie?" Ralph begged. He saw that Mollie was taking less part in the amusements than the other girls.
"Certainly!" agreed Mollie. "I accept your proffered honor. To tell you the truth, you stand a better chance of winning with my assistance. I am a much better seamstress than Bab."
"Oh, Bab, will be busy winning the riding prize," declared Ralph under his breath, smiling at his two friends, Mollie and Barbara.
Maud Warren, the New York girl famous for her skillful riding, was standing near them, talking with Reginald Latham. As she overheard Ralph's remark, a sarcastic smile flitted across her pale face. She had ignored Bab since their introduction at the Ambassador's; but the thought of this poor country girl's really knowing how to ride horseback was too much for her.
Barbara caught Maud Warren's look of amusement and blushed furiously. Then she turned to Ralph and said aloud, "Oh, I am not a rider when compared with Miss Warren."
"I don't believe in comparisons, Miss Thurston," declared the Ambassador, who had walked up to them. "But I think you are an excellent horsewoman. And I much prefer your riding in the old-fashioned way with a side saddle. I have observed that it is now fashionable, in Lenox, for the young women to ride astride."
"Girls," Miss Stuart declared, "it is luncheon time. We must return to the hotel."
"Now, does everybody understand about to-morrow?" asked Gwendolin Morton, when the last farewells had been said. "Remember, the Gymkana race is first. We started with this spectacle for fear the girls who have promised to take part might back out. Then, immediately after lunch, we shall have our horseback riding and jumping."
"I don't believe I have been wise in permitting you to engage in this horseback riding, Barbara," Miss Stuart declared on their way home. "I am afraid this jumping over fences is a dangerous sport. And I am not sure it is ladylike."
"But English girls do it all the time, Aunt Sallie. Jumping hurdles is taught in the best riding schools."
"You have had no lessons, Bab. Are you perfectly sure you do not feel afraid?" queried Miss Stuart.
"Oh, perfectly, dear Aunt Sallie," Bab assured her.
The day for the Lenox sports dawned clear and beautiful. By breakfast time the mists had rolled away from the hilltops. The trees, which were now beginning to show bare places among their leafy branches, beheld their own reflections in the lakes that nestled at the feet of the Lenox hills.