enterprise which had nothing to do with any one about him. He was
frowning and waving his arms, and making stabbing gestures with his
fingers, and paid no attention to the conversation between Judith and
the new boy.

"What _can_ you do? What _do_ you know?" asked the former at last.

"I can ride horseback," said Arnold defiantly.

Judith put him to the test at once, leading the way to the stall which
was the abode of the little pinto broncho, left them, she explained,
as a trust by one of Father's students from the Far West, who was now
graduated and a civil engineer in Chicago, where it cost too much to
keep a horse. Arnold emerged from this encounter with the pony with
but little more credit than he had earned in the garden, showing an
ineptness about equine ways which led Judith through an unsparing
cross-examination to the information that the boy's experience of
handling a horse consisted in being ready in a riding-costume at a
certain hour every afternoon, and mounting a well-broken little
pony, all saddled and bridled, which was "brought round" to the
porte-cochère.

"What's a porte-cochère?" she asked, with her inimitable air of
despising it, whatever it might turn out to be.

Arnold stared with an attempt to copy her own frank scorn for
another's ignorance. "Huh! Don't you even know that much? It's the big
porch without any floor to it, where carriages drive up so you can get
in and out without getting wet if it rains. Every house that's good
for anything has one."