It may be premature to state that our heroine had already adjusted her future to her present pleasing environment; but the fact remains that when the train stopped at the station for which her subconscious mind had fortunately been listening, Joan was just in the act of moving Ellen Neal and her mother's furniture into a large Quaker house with a gambrel roof.... Betty was waiting for her in a dog-cart; brown as a berry, with sleeves rolled up, and a bare, tousled head, quite a different young person already from the shy little girl who had been her slave at the Convent. "Hurry up, old Joie!" she called, wrestling with the cob, who rose on his hind legs to snort at the snorting engine, while a diminutive groom tried with frantic leapings to reach his head. "The Rabbit hates to stand! Run and get Miss Darcy's things, Jenks" (this to the groom) "and be quick about it, will you? You see," she explained as Joan climbed perilously aboard and was duly kissed, "when I left, Mother was two up and four to play, and it's the finals, and she's already got a leg on the cup. Great, isn't it? We'll have to gallop all the way to get there before it's over!" "What _are_ you talking about?" asked mystified Joan. "A leg on the cup--!" Hitherto golf had not entered into her vocabulary; though she had gazed at it from afar, wondering at the strange ways men choose to waste their golden hours. "Why, the tournament, of course! Didn't I write you? We're deep in it. Where are your clubs, by the way?" She glanced at Joan's bag and parasol-case. "Oh, dear! Have you left them on the train?" "Clubs?--You mean golf-sticks?" asked Joan, with misgivings. "Why, I haven't any. I don't play golf." "_Don't play golf?_" cried Betty in genuine dismay. "What ever will you do with yourself here? And how on earth do you amuse yourself in Kentucky? Just ride?" "Why, yes," said Joan feebly, "we--we ride." Once, indeed, during a period of comparative affluence, the Major had possessed for a while a horse of the family type; and under his instruction Joan had occasionally mounted the complaisant beast and propelled it fearfully about back streets, feeling that something was due her Kentucky traditions. But suppose she were expected to mount, for instance, some such fire-eater as the Rabbit! "I don't believe I've brought my riding-clothes," she murmured hastily. "Goose! Why not? But I dare say Mother can fit you out with trousers," said Betty, glancing casually at her friend's slim length of limb. "Mine'd be too short. With trousers and a sweater you'll be all right." Joan's eyes opened wide, but her mouth remained closed. After all, she was out for experience. If it included meeting a violent death while clad in trousers and a sweater, so be it. "Uncle Neddy'll find you a decent horse somewhere," Betty was running on. "He's awfully keen about your coming, Jo. I'm afraid you're going to have him on your hands a lot, especially if you don't play golf."