"'Tush for the great, coarse, commonsense riding boots,' I says firmly;
'you will wear precisely that neat little pair of almost new tan pumps
with the yellow bows that you're standing in now. Do you get me?'
"'But that would be too dainty and absurd,' says Hetty.
"'Exactly!' I says, shutting my mouth hard.
"'Why, I almost believe I do get you,' says she, looking religiously up
into the future like that lady saint playing the organ in the picture.
"'Another thing,' I says: 'You are deathly afraid of a horse and was
hardly ever on one but once when you were a teeny girl, but you do love
the open life, so you just nerved yourself up to come.'
"'I believe I see more clearly than ever,' says Hetty. She grew up on a
ranch, knows more about a horse than the horse himself does, and would
be a top rider most places, with the cheap help we get nowadays that can
hardly set a saddle.
"'Also from time to time,' I goes on, 'you want to ask this Mr. D.
little, timid, silly questions that will just tickle him to death and
make him feel superior. Ask him to tell you which legs of a horse the
chaps go on, and other things like that; ask him if the sash that holds
the horrid old saddle on isn't so tight it's hurting your horse.
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