Mrs. Ball had a sense of playing up with grace and distinction to some imaginary standard of life abroad. "He will find me much more like the ladies he knows in London and Paris than most people about here." Val had told herself that Ethan had invented the ride so that they should be freer; they would get ahead of the others, or fall behind, and have some time to themselves. But Mrs. Ball started off next morning with Mr. Gano, and ruthlessly rode beside him all the way. Val alternately raged in her heart, and forgot how sore it was, watching one of those two on in front. How well he sat his horse! But so did Harry. What was it in Ethan that distinguished him so from other men, and set him for ever apart? She tried to give it a name while Harry's small-talk trickled vaguely through her brain. They stopped to lunch, and put up the horses at the Forest Park Lodge. While they were dismounting, a buggy dashed up with a man and a girl in it. The miserable old mare had been driven to death, and was covered with sweat and foam. "Brute!" said Ethan under his breath, glowering at the man, who threw the reins round the whip, and helped his companion out. "Pretty sort of girl to let him drive like that," was Val's comment, as the couple went towards the hotel. "Never saw so much of a beast's ribs before without the trouble of taking off his skin," said Wilbur. "My goodness!" added Mrs. Ball, "that's not a horse; it's a plate-rack." "Look here," said Ethan to the man who was leading their horses to the stables, "you're going to rub this other beast down, I suppose, and--" "Never have no sich orders from Mr. Joicey," said the man. "That's Joicey." He jerked his thumb after the two figures. "Comes here a lot. Mare looks wuss'n she is. D'ye know that there nag is Blue Grass?" "Not the filly that won--" "Yes, siree bob; won a pile fur Joicey's father. Goes like hell even yet." "Give her a rub down and a feed, and say nothing about it," said Gano, transferring something from his pocket to the man's hand. "For the sake of battles long ago," he added to his companions, seeming to apologize. As they walked up to the hotel Mrs. Ball ran on volubly about the ill-treatment of animals. "I like to remember some magnificent thoroughbreds I saw the last time I was in Holland," Ethan said in the first pause. "I fell in with their owner afterwards, a certain Monsieur Oscar." "That the fellow that trains horses?" asked Wilbur. "Yes, founder of the Continental Cirque. He'd been all over the world, and was giving his last performance while I was at Scheveningen. When I came across him afterwards, he had sold all the animals and properties of his great show. 'All,' he said, 'except my eight favorite horses.' I asked if he was going to keep them. 'No,' he said; 'I shot them after my last performance. I might have sold them well, but I thought perhaps they might come down in the world, and end by going between shafts. No, I cared about 'em, so I shot 'em.'"