she was glad that the
opportunity of informing Torrance of her intention was not afforded her,
since he had ridden off somewhere earlier in the day. It also happened
that although the days were growing colder she arrayed herself
fastidiously in a long, light skirt, which she had not worn since she left
Cedar, and which with the white hat that matched it became her better than
the conventional riding attire. Miss Schuyler naturally noticed this.

"Is it a garden party we are going to?" she asked.

Hetty laughed. "We may meet some of our neighbours, and after staying with
you all that while in New York I don't want to go back on you. I had the
thing specially made in Chicago for riding in."

Miss Schuyler was not quite satisfied, but she made no further comment,
and there was much to occupy her attention. The bleached plain was bright
with sunshine and rolled back into the distance under an arch of cloudless
blue, while the crisp, clear air stirred her blood like an elixir. They
swept up a rise and down it, the colour mantling in their faces, over the
long hollow, and up a slope again, until, as the white grass rolled behind
her, Flora Schuyler yielded to the exhilaration of swift motion, and,
flinging off the constraint of the city, rejoiced in the springy rush of
the mettlesome beast beneath her. Streaming white levels, the blue of the
sliding sky, the kiss of the wind on her hot cheek, and the roar of hoofs,
all reacted upon her until she laughed aloud when she hurled her half-wild
broncho down a slope.

"This is surely the finest country in the world," she said.

The words were blown behind her, but Hetty caught some of them, and, when
at last she drew bridle where a rise ran steep and seamed with
badger-holes against the sky, nodded with a little air of pride.

"Oh, yes, and it's ours. All of it," she said. "Worth fighting for, isn't
it?"

Flora Schuyler laughed a little, but she shook her head. "It's a pity one
couldn't leave that out. You would stay here with your men folk if there
was trouble?"

Hetty looked at her with a little flash in her eyes. "Why, of course! It's
our country. We made it, and I'd go around in rags and groom the boys'
horses if it would help them to whip out the men who want to take it from
us."

Flora Schuyler smiled a trifle drily. "The trouble is that when we fall
out, one is apt to find as good Americans as we are, and sometimes the men
we like the most, standing in with the opp