"A bicycle," smiled Emily. "Of course he's not a real groom, only our houseboy, Joe. It's terribly mortifying to his pride. 'Miss Em'ly, s'posin' we was to meet some one what knows us?' is his constant plea; so I ride in out-of-the-way roads to spare his feelings. If we do meet acquaintances, he drops far behind and pretends he isn't with me. When old Dob feels his oats, poor Joe has a fearful time keeping up. I hear him panting and gasping behind me, 'Woa thar, woa thar, Dobbin! Gawd sakes, Miss Em'ly, don' you know a bicycle wa'n't never _meant_ to gallop?'" Joan was both astonished and amused. She could not fit the picture into her conception of the Carmichael elegance. "_I_ shouldn't bother with a groom at all," she murmured. "Of course you wouldn't! But you see I've got old-fashioned parents who can't imagine a young girl being able to go about alone in safety. They suspect a bandit of lurking behind every bush for the purpose of carrying off their precious Emily. So far no bandit has had the courage to attempt it!" she sighed. "Do you know, what I envy you most is your independence?" "My independence? But that's just what I wish I had!" cried Joan, and presently found herself confiding in this stranger something that she had hitherto kept to herself--her determination to earn her own living. The other girl listened with sympathy, too well-bred to ask questions, but quick to understand. "It doesn't seem fair," she sighed. "We girls haven't a chance at all. If you were a boy you would have been prepared in some way, of course. In our family, for instance, my brother Johnny, who isn't half as intelligent as I am (and that's not bragging, either), was put most unwillingly through college, and given three extra years at law, and sent around the world--all to prepare him for a career of horse-racing and wild oats generally. He's a dear, you know, but he must have his little wild oats.... And what did I get? Two years of an Eastern finishing school, where I learned to dress better than we can afford, to sing and play a little, and to speak French with a fair accent! I wasn't even prepared for--the thing that's expected of us," she added, flushing. "I've never cooked a meal nor made a bed in my life, Mother proceeding on the theory that if you learn how to do such things you'll have to do them--No fear! No sensible, practical, poor young man would ever have the courage to ask such a useless thing as me to share his humble lot!" Joan looked at her curiously. She was a tall, rather statuesque type, as so many Kentucky women are; not beautiful, but with a splendid figure, a gallant poise of the head, an air of race and elegance that associated oddly with the idea of cooking and bedmaking. "You'll simply have to choose the sort of husband that hasn't a humble lot," Joan suggested.