Mary looked after them almost enviously. When she first came to Bauer she had had faint hopes of sometime being able to join a riding party like that. She had seen girls going by often from the hotel, and had told herself that, before the winter was over, she intended to find some way to earn enough to hire a horse one afternoon of every week. And that time when she visited Gay, and Roberta talked of saddles while she combed Mary's hair, Roberta had said that she would ride up to Bauer sometime after Christmas; all her "crowd" would go, and they would stay several days at the Williams House, and Mary was to show them the country. Gay had promised several visits, and Mary had looked forward to them more eagerly than she knew, till word came soon after New Year that the Bauer trips would have to be postponed indefinitely. Roberta had gone to the coast for the rest of the winter, and Gay expected to spend several months with her sister Lucy, Mrs. Jameson Harcourt, in Florida. It seemed to Mary that there had been disappointment for her in her Texas winter every way she turned. True, Gay was home now, and they had had two pleasant days with her, once when she and Alex Shelby came up to announce their engagement, and cheered Jack up so wonderfully. But Gay wasn't interested in horseback riding with "the crowd" any longer. Besides, the Ware fortunes had taken such a turn that the money she had succeeded in earning had to go for more necessary things than saddles and horse-hire and a pretty habit. As Mary glanced after the departing cavalcade once more the sight of them suggested a new picture that appealed to her as an interesting way to meet Phil in case he should come. It would be so picturesque to be galloping down the road on a mettlesome black horse in a pretty white riding habit like those girls were wearing. White, with a scarlet four-in-hand and a soft fold of scarlet silk around the crown of her wide-brimmed white hat. Phil had been such a dashing horseman himself, and had owned such a beautiful animal when they were out on the desert, that maybe he would be more interested in an approach made that way, than one in a boat with a cargo of wild flowers. She walked along slowly, considering the question, till Brud and Sister hailed her. Meanwhile Jack was saying to his mother that it wouldn't have been fair to the kid to let her get away without some inkling of the truth. "She'd have been terribly upset if I'd have told her that they are due here this afternoon, and she'd have been equally upset if they had walked in on her without any warning. But the hint I gave her will start her to thinking about them, so she will not be altogether surprised when she sees them."