So they all gathered up their coats and went out. They filled the tonneau of this car, which Mr. Cortlandt kept for city use, so completely that Alys groaned as she adjusted herself into as small a wedge as she could and remarked that she was glad they were not going far. They rolled leisurely around two corners and ran along a few blocks on an avenue, then turned into a cross street and, a short distance down its length eastward, stopped. “Is this--why, yes, it is a stable!” cried Beth. “I had been looking for a regular barn.” “Painted red, with a wooden cock, or a trotting horse on the roof to tell which way the wind blew?” laughed her uncle. “Not here, my niece! Here we go into an opening in a long line of brick, much as the cave men used to go into caves to stable their horses and goats. And we go up-stairs to visit the horses.” Beth jumped out, swung by her uncle’s outstretched hands. “It doesn’t matter; I’m sure it will be all right when we get there. Everything here is different, but perfectly splendid,” Beth cried, ready to be delighted, which is half the recipe for having a good time anywhere. The stablemen greeted Mr. Cortlandt with hearty liking shining through their respectful salutations. One of them hailed Dirk with a slap on the shoulder which Dirk returned by a friendly poke. Beth noticed that Dirk seemed quite transformed by this visit. At home the girls led; Dirk was, as he would have put it, “not in it,” but here in the stable his sisters suddenly shrank into nobodies of importance and Dirk became the one of the Cortlandt children who mattered. “Your horse is all right, Master Dirk,” the man who slapped Dirk said. “He may have had a little cold, but I think he was just playin’ off. They’re foxy when they don’t want to go. ’T any rate there’s not wan thing wrong wid him now.” “Has Dirk a horse? A horse his very own?” Beth whispered, awestruck, to Alys. “We all three have,” said Alys. “Come on; we’re going to see them.” Nothing that had happened so far had so completely overwhelmed Beth as this statement. A horse! each of her young cousins owned a whole horse, a live, entire horse! She followed her aunt and uncle up to the second floor of this curious stable in a maze of wonder.