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SO BIG

of this here line. Lookut it! There’s a picture for you, now!”

Paula looked up at Dirk. “You ride, don’t you?”

“I used to ride the old nags, bareback, on the farm.”

“You'll have to learn. We'll teach him, won’t we, Pat?”

Pat surveyed Dirk’s lean, flexible figure. “Easy.”

“Oh, say!” protested Dirk.

“Then I'll have some one to ride with me. Theodore never rides. He never takes any sort of exercise. Sits in that great fat car of his.”

They went into the coach house, a great airy white-washed place with glittering harness and spurs and bridles like jewels in glass cases. There were ribbons, too, red and yellow and blue in a rack on the wall; and trophy cups. The coach house gave Dirk a little hopeless feeling. He had never before seen anything like it. In the first place, there were no motors in it. He had forgotten that people rode in anything but motors. A horse on Chicago’s boulevards raised a laugh. The sight of a shining brougham with two sleek chestnuts driving down Michigan Avenue would have set that street to staring and sniggering as a Roman chariot drawn by zebras might have done. Yet here was such a brougham, glittering, spotless. Here was a smart cream surrey with a cream-coloured top hung with fringe. There were two-wheeled carts high and slim and chic. A victoria. Two pony carts. One would have thought, seeing this room, that the motor vehicle had never been invented.