At this stage in her meditations Joy laughed and ceased wishing. It was all very well to desire Green Gnomes and golden-haired fairy-ladies to gallop down the bridle-path, but the chances were that if any one did come it would be the old lady and her daughter, on livery horses, and that they would wish to alight and talk to her. City-bred Joy didn't want to talk. She only wanted to be left here alone with the trees and the sunset. It was more than time to dress for dinner, she knew it well, for the sunset was a little less bright. But she deliberately stayed where she was, the ballad singing itself dreamily still through her head. And then she did hear the click of a horse's hoofs, quite plainly. CHAPTER THREE PHYLLIS RIDES THROUGH When Joy could see the rider she was relieved to find that he had no intention of stopping. Then--a little too late--she sprang up and ran after him; for the horse was a pony, and the rider a little boy, laughing too gleefully not to be in mischief, and lashing the pony on. He was having a perfectly wonderful time, apparently, and seemed to have a safe seat; but he was certainly much too young to be galloping through the woods at sunset alone. Joy fell back panting from her vain chase. "Why, he wasn't more than four or five," she said half-aloud. "What _will_ his mother say?" But the clatter of the light hoofs, and the delighted shouts of the child, passed like an apparition, leaving Joy half wondering if she had imagined it all. Though she was still a little concerned, because somebody was very fond of that mop of flying dusky hair, and the triumphant little voice that had echoed past her. "I can wait here, anyway," she decided at once. "Some one may come looking for him, and I can tell which way he went." She sat still where she was for a little while longer. She had nearly made up her mind to follow the child, when, to her great relief, she heard another horse coming. "I can send whoever it is after him," she thought, springing up and running out to the path. "Oh, wait! Please wait!" she called to the as yet unseen rider. The horse was pulled to a walk, and its rider slipped to the ground, coming into Joy's sight with the bridle over her arm, and the animal following her. "Did you see--" began the strange lady, just as Joy said: "Would you please--" Then each stopped and waited for the other to go on, though the lady with the big white horse seemed in haste to ask and be gone. She was the first to continue, rather hurriedly. "Did you see a little boy on a pony, riding this way?" she asked. "I'm hunting for him."