Excerpt
CHAPTER I. A BYWAY OF THE ARDSLEY.
The white burro had a will of her own. So, distinctly, had her mistress. As had often happened, these two wills conflicted.
For the pair had come to a point where three ways met. Pepita wanted to ascend the hill, by a path she knew, to stable and supper. Amy wished to follow a descending road, which she did not know, into the depths of the forest. Neither inclined toward the safe middle course, straight onward through the village, now picturesque in the coloring of a late September day.
"No, Pepita. You must obey me. If I'm not firm this time, you'll act worse the next. To the right, amiable beastie!"
Both firmness and sarcasm were wasted. The burro rigidly planted her forefeet in the dust and sorrowfully dropped her head.
Amy tugged at the bridle.
"Pepita! To—the—right! Go on. In your native Californian—Vamos!"
The "Californian" budged not, but posed, an image of dejection. The happiness of life had departed; the tale of her woe seemed pictured in every hair of her thickly coated body; she was a broken-hearted donkey.
Amy Kaye was neither broken-hearted nor broken-spirited, and she was wholly comfortable. Her saddle was soft and fitted well. The air was delightful. She pulled a book from her pocket and began to read. In five minutes she was so absorbed that she had forgotten Pepita's little mannerisms.
After a while the "Californian" moved her head just enough to gain a corner-wise glimpse of a calm and unresponsive face beneath a scarlet Tam; and evidently realizing that she had become a mere support to the maid who owned her, uttered her protest.
"Bra-a-ay! Ah-umph! Ah-umph—umph—mph—ph—h!"
Amy read on.
Pepita changed her tactics. She began to double herself together in a fashion disconcerting to most riders; whereupon Amy simply drew her own limbs up out of harm's way and waited for the burro's anatomy to settle itself in a heap on the ground.
"All right, honey."
Then she resumed her book, and the beast her meditations. Thus they remained until the rumble of an approaching wagon caused the now submissive animal to rise and move aside out of the road.
Again Amy tested the bridle, and found that she might now ride whither she pleased.
"Is it so, beloved? Well, then, that's right; and when you do right because I make you, it is one lump of sugar. Open your mouth. Here. But, Pepita, when you do right without compulsion, there are always two lumps. Into the forest—go!"
Pepita went. Suddenly, swiftly, and so recklessly that Amy nearly slid over her head.
"Very well! What suits you suits me. I'm as good a sticker-on as you are a shaker-off. Besides, a word in your ear. It would be quite the proper, story-book sort of thing for you to try and break my neck, as a punishment, since I'm almost running away."
Though she had always lived within a few miles of the spot the girl had never before visited it. That she did so now, without knowledge of anybody at home, gave her a sense of daring, almost of danger, as new as it was fascinating. True, she had not been forbidden, simply because nobody had thought of her wandering so far afield; yet the habit of her life had been such as to make anything out of the common seem strange, even wrong.
"However, since I'm here, I'll see what there is to see and tell them all about it afterward—that is, if they will care to hear," she ended her remark to the burro with a sigh, and for a bit forgot her surroundings. Then she rallied, and with the spirit of an explorer, peered curiously into all the delightful nooks and corners which presented; not observing that the road grew steadily more steep and rough, nor that Pepita's feet slipped and stumbled, warningly, among the loose stones, which were so hidden by fallen leaves that Amy could not see them....