They had followed Hal’s instructions, and were very quiet when at midnight they stole up the outside stairs to their cots in the ball-room. Once, when little Pondy had enjoyed himself too much, he plunged into bed with his clothes on, but was promptly dragged out and made to undress, while he kept saying thickly, “I don’t—call—this—enshoying my—shelf by a —— shight.” After that he kept pretty straight in the ball-room, with the exception of once smoking in bed and setting fire to the sheets. The blaze was extinguished, and as the sheets belonged to Hal, they were taken away, and Mrs. Stannard never knew how near she came to a conflagration. The next morning Pondy complained of a headache, the result, he said, of certain hard blows aimed, he supposed, at the burning sheets, but which by accident missed fire and hit him. A drive would do him good. Not a noisy thing like those they had taken in a carryall, when they had sung college songs and given college yells, which made the people think they were lunatics on their way to the asylum. He’d like a quiet drive with Charlie Browne, after that pretty little bay mare he’d seen going in and out of the deacon’s yard. “_Con_, I heard the doctor call her. That’s a funny name for a horse. His girl’s, maybe,” and he looked at Harry, who did not reply at once. He knew the reason for the horse’s name and respected Kenneth’s confidence so far as not to speak of it to his friends, and especially to Pondy, who had made so many boasts of his conquests. “And I don’t care for a soul of ’em, except one,” he had said, “and I shouldn’t care for her if she hadn’t sat down on me and called me an insolent little cur when I made some advances to her she didn’t like; tried to take her hand, you know, when we were riding in a diligence near Spezzia after dark.” “Served you right! Who is she? What’s her name?” was asked, but Pondy shook his head. “Sha’n’t tell,” he said, “till we have our blow-out and finish Warner’s Safe Cure. Then we’ll each drink to the prettiest girl we ever saw.” Spying Kenneth just then in the yard, he went out to him and asked for the bay mare for a short drive with Charlie. “Sha’n’t be gone much over an hour. Head aches, and I want some exercise.” Kenneth hesitated a moment. This was the first favor any of the party had asked of him. Con had nothing to do that day, as he was to make his calls on his wheel. It seemed ungracious not to let her go, and he finally consented, with sundry charges as to her treatment. “No whip; no urging, as she is very free, and needs holding back even when going up hill,” he said. “All right, I’ll be careful of her as if she were your girl,” Pondy replied, with a laugh, as he drove from the yard with Charlie Browne beside him.