"Here's to the interloper!" Ruth raised her glass and drank the last of
her ginger ale. "We always provide for one. Usually it's a small boy."

"More often a pair of them. And always there are Bess, Colonel, and
Sheik." Roberta rose to her feet, the last three sandwiches in hand, and
walked away to the horses tied to the fence-rail.

Richard's eyes followed her. In the austere lines of her riding-habit he
could see more clearly than he had yet done what a superb young image of
health and energy she was.

"Rob adores horses," Ruth remarked, looking after her sister also. "You
ought to see her ride cross-country. My Bess can't jump, but her Colonel
can. I don't believe there's anything in sight Rob and Colonel couldn't
jump. But I can never get used to seeing her; I have to shut my eyes
when Colonel rises, and I don't open them till I hear him land. But he's
never fallen with her, and she says he never will."

"He won't."

"Why not? Any horse might, you know, if he slipped on wet ground or
something."

"He never will with her on his back. He's more likely to jump so high
he'll never come down."

Ruth laughed. "Look at Colonel rub his nose against her, now he's had
the sandwich. Don't you wish you had a picture of them?"