"We must do what we can with her," Miss Lucilla said helplessly to the Youngest Teacher. "She may acquire something by association; and, at least, she seems harmless." Belinda agreed with due solemnity. "Yes, unless she falls upon someone, she'll do no active damage." "But her laziness and lack of ambition set such bad standards for the other girls," sighed Miss Lucilla. Belinda shook her head in protest. "Not at all. She's valuable as an awful example." So Eva May, whose baptismal name was Evangeline Marie, and whose father, John Jenkins, a worthy brewer, had wandered from Ohio to the South, married a French creole, and accidentally made a colossal fortune out of a patent spigot, rocked her ponderous way through school routine, wept over the trials of book heroines, munched sweets, filled the greater part of the front bench in certain classes where she never, by any chance, recited, furnished considerable amusement to her schoolmates, and grew steadily fatter. "If she stays until June we'll never be able to get her out through the door," prophesied Miss Barnes, the teacher of mathematics one morning, as she and Belinda stood at the door of the music-room during Eva May's practice hour, and looked at the avalanche of avoirdupois overflowing a small piano-stool. "Something really must be done." Chance provided something. The ram in the thicket took the form of an epidemic started by Amelia Bowers, whose fond parents conceived the idea that their child was not having exercise enough in city confines and wrote that they wanted her to have a horse and ride in the Park. Being a southern girl she was used to riding, but they thought it would be well for her to have a few lessons at a good riding-school, and, of course, a riding-master or reliable groom must accompany her in the Park. The Misses Ryder groaned. A teacher must chaperon the fair Amelia to riding-school, and sit there doing absent chaperoning until her charge should be restored to her by the riding-master. The teachers were already too busy. Still, as Mr. Bowers was an influential patron, the arrangement must be made. No sooner was the matter noised abroad than the whole school was bitten by the riding mania. Those who could ride wanted to ride. Those who couldn't wanted to learn. Frantic appeals went forth by letters to parents throughout the United States, but riding in New York is an expensive pastime, and only five fathers responded with the desired blessings and adequate checks. Miss Ryder wrote to the head of a popular riding-school and asked that someone be sent to talk the arrangements over with her. The next evening, during recreation hour, the girls fortunate enough to be in the drawing-room saw a radiant vision ushered in by the maid and left to await the coming of the principal.