The next morning Sidney was ready and on her, way to Miss Letty's house before six o'clock. She had been far too excited to eat any of the breakfast Aunt Achsa had set out for her but Miss Letty, guessing this, made her sit down and eat a bit of toast and a boiled egg. "It's a long way between here and Wellfleet and King's slower than he used to be." Seated next to Miss Letty, jogging along through the misty morning, Sidney could not speak for pure rapture of delight. She had never ridden behind a horse in her life! She thought King a giant steed; with every swish of his long tail her heart skipped a beat, the move of his great muscles under his heavy flanks held her fascinated gaze. Miss Letty talked to him as though he were human and the animal understood and tossed his head. She said: "Now, King, we're going to Wellfleet and we got to get there before noon." And then she let the reins slacken and slip down between her knees as though she had no further care. One certainly could not do that with an automobile! Sidney did not wonder now that Miss Letty preferred King to a Ford. She wished she dared ask Miss Letty how old King really was but she did not think it polite anymore than if she asked Miss Letty how old she was. King was not handsome, he was bony like his mistress, but he certainly understood everything. Miss Letty said he knew they were going to Elizy Davies' by the way he loped ahead; King, too, had a strong liking for Elizy Davies' gingerbread. "She feeds it to him in great hunks. And he won't eat anyone else's gingerbread, either. Scornful as you please even when I offer him some. Now I say that's discriminating for a horse. I suppose it's what folks call horse-sense." Sidney did not know which she liked better, watching the gleaming marshes through which the highway wound or listening to Miss Letty's spasmodic conversation. Miss Letty pointed out old landmarks to Sidney, then told her something of the school at Truro to which she and Elizy Davies had gone, then of the little girls to whom she was about to give music lessons. She had taught their mothers. Then she lapsed into a deep silence broken only by an occasional "cl-lk" to King which she made with her tongue against her teeth and to which King paid no attention except for a flick of his right ear. Sidney, looking down at the great bony hands limply holding the reins, thought it very funny to picture them on the keyboard of a piano. If she had spoken her thoughts aloud Miss Letty would have told her, quite calmly, that she couldn't play a note now, but that she knew when notes were played right and she could still rap lagging fingers smartly across the knuckles. Folks would have her, anyway. Sidney did not know, of course, that Miss Letty was a tradition and that Cape Cod clings to its traditions.