She had been drawn into the dining-room with Kersley's outstretched arms closing around her firmly as she mechanically but ineffectually strove to retreat, his blue eyes beaming down on her as he whispered: "Oh, Marcia, Marcia! This comes of trying to show gratitude to strangers. '_About to be engaged!_' Accepting a honeymoon cottage before you'd accepted the man!" MR. CARTERET AND HIS FELLOW AMERICANS ABROAD[6] BY DAVID GRAY "It must have been highly interesting," observed Mrs. Archie Brawle; "so much pleasanter than a concert." "Rather!" replied Lord Frederic. "It was ripping!" Mrs. Ascott-Smith turned to Mr. Carteret. She had been listening to Lord Frederic Westcote, who had just come down from town where he had seen the Wild West show. "Is it so?" she asked. "Have you ever seen them?" By "them" she meant the Indians. Mr. Carteret nodded. "It seems so odd," continued Mrs. Archie Brawle, "that they should ride without saddles. Is it a pose?" "No, I fancy not," replied Lord Frederic. "They must get very tired without stirrups," insisted Mrs. Archie. "But perhaps they never ride very long at a time." "That is possible," said Lord Frederic doubtfully. "They are only on about twenty minutes in the show." Mr. Pringle, the curate, who had happened in to pay his monthly call upon Mrs. Ascott-Smith, took advantage of the pause. "Of course, I am no horseman," he began apprehensively, "and I have never seen the red Indians, either in their native wilds or in a show, but I have read not a little about them, and I have gathered that they almost live on horseback." Major Hammerslea reached toward the tea table for another muffin and hemmed. "It is a very different thing," he said with heavy impressiveness. "It is a very different thing." The curate looked expectant, as if believing that his remarks were going to be noticed. But nothing was further from the Major's mind. "What is so very different?" inquired Mrs. Ascott-Smith, after a pause had made it clear that the Major had ignored Pringle. "It is one thing, my dear Madame, to ride a stunted, half-starved pony, as you say 'bareback,' and another thing to ride a conditioned British Hunter (he pronounced it huntaw) without a saddle. I must say that the latter is an impossibility." The oracle came to an end and the material Major began on the muffin. There was an approving murmur of assent. The Major was the author of "Schooling and Riding British Hunters;" however, it was not only his authority which swayed the company, but individual conviction. Of the dozen people in the room, excepting Pringle, all rode to hounds with more or less enthusiasm, and no one had ever seen any one hunting without a saddle and no one had ever experienced any desire to try the experiment. Obviously it was an absurdity. "Nevertheless," observed Lord Frederic, "I must say their riding was very creditable--quite as good as one sees on any polo field in England."