ed Laddie. "If
anything comes to my mind later, I won't forget to tell you. Oh yes,
there was one thing: You couldn't keep Mr. Pryor from talking about
Leon. He must have taken a great fancy to him. He talked until he
worried the Princess, and she tried to keep him away from the subject,
but his mind seemed to run on it constantly. When we were riding she
talked quite as much as he, and it will hustle us to think what the
little scamp did, any bigger than they do. Of course, father, you
understood the price Mr. Pryor made on one of his very finest colts was
a joke. There's a strain of Arab in the father--he showed me the
record--and the mother is bluegrass. There you get gentleness and
endurance combined with speed and nerve. I'd trade Flos for that colt
as it stands to-day. There's nothing better on earth in the way of
horse. His offer is practically giving it away. I know, with the
records to prove its pedigree, what that colt would bring him in any
city market."

"I don't like it," said mother. "I want Leon to have a horse, but a
boy in a first experience, and reckless as he is, doesn't need a horse
like that, for one thing, and what is more important, I refuse to be
put under any obligations to Pryors."

"That's the reason Mr. Pryor asked anything at all for the horse. It
is my opinion that he would be greatly pleased to give it to Leon, if
he could do what he liked."

"Well, that's precisely the thing he can't do in this family," said
mother sternly.

"What do you think, father?" asked Laddie.

"I think Amen! to that proposition," said father; "but I would have to
take time to thresh it out completely. It appeals to me that Leon is
old enough to recognize the value of the animal; and that the care of
it would develop and strengthen his character. It would be a
responsibility that would steady him. You could teach him to tend and
break it."

"Break it!" cried Laddie. "Break it! Why father, he's riding it
bareback all over the Pryor meadow now, and jumping it over logs.
Whenever he leaves, it follows him to the fence, and the Princess says
almost any hour of the day you look out you can see it pacing up and
down watching this way and whinnying for him to come."

"And your best judgment is----?"

Laddie laughed as he tied my hood strings. "Well I don't feel about
the Pryors as the rest of you do," he said. "If the money isn't
claimed inside the time you specified, I would let Leon and