ust now her particular interest veered toward athleticism; she had
recently returned from a visit to Macon City and brimmed with colourful
tales of its "Country Club" life--swimming, golf, tennis, horseback
riding, and so forth. These pursuits she straightway set out to
introduce into drowsy, behind-the-times Cherryvale. But in almost every
direction she encountered difficulties: there was in Cherryvale no place
to swim except muddy Bull Creek--and the girls' mothers unanimously
vetoed that; and there were no links for golf; and the girls themselves
didn't enthuse greatly over tennis those broiling afternoons. So Tess
centred on horseback riding, deciding it was the "classiest" sport,
after all. But the old Neds and Nellies of the town, accustomed
leisurely to transport their various family surreys, did not
metamorphose into hackneys of such spirit and dash as filled Tess's
dreams.

Even so, these steeds were formidable enough to Missy. She feared she
wasn't very athletic. That was an afternoon of frightful chagrin when
she came walking back into Cherryvale, ignominiously following Dr.
O'Neill's Ben. Old Ben, who was lame in his left hind foot, had a
curious gait, like a sort of grotesque turkey trot. Missy outwardly
attributed her inability to keep her seat to Ben's peculiar rocking
motion, but in her heart she knew it was simply because she was afraid.
What she was afraid of she couldn't have specified. Not of old Ben
surely, for she knew him to be the gentlest of horses. When she stood on
the ground beside him, stroking his shaggy, uncurried flanks or feeding
him bits of sugar, she felt not the slightest fear. Yet the minute
she climbed up into the saddle she sickened under the grip of some
increasingly heart-stilling panic. Even before Ben started forward; so
it wasn't Ben's rocking, lop-sided gait that was really at the bottom of
her fear--it only accentuated it. Why was she afraid of Ben up there in
the saddle while not in the least afraid when standing beside him?
Fear was very strange. Did everybody harbour some secret, absurd,
unreasonable fear? No, Tess didn't; Tess wasn't afraid of anything. Tess
was cantering along on rawboned Nellie in beautiful unconcern. Missy
admired and envied her dreadfully.

Her sense of her own shortcomings became all the more poignant when the
little cavalcade, with Missy still ignominiously footing it in the
rear, had to pass the group of loafers in front of the Post Office.
The