Arnold emerged from this encounter with the pony with
but little more credit than he had earned in the garden, showing an
ineptness about equine ways which led Judith through an unsparing
cross-examination to the information that the boy's experience of
handling a horse consisted in being ready in a riding-costume at a
certain hour every afternoon, and mounting a well-broken little
pony, all saddled and bridled, which was "brought round" to the
porte-cochere.
"What's a porte-cochere?" she asked, with her inimitable air of
despising it, whatever it might turn out to be.
Arnold stared with an attempt to copy her own frank scorn for
another's ignorance. "Huh! Don't you even know that much? It's the big
porch without any floor to it, where carriages drive up so you can get
in and out without getting wet if it rains. Every house that's good
for anything has one."
So far from being impressed or put down, Judith took her stand as
usual on the offensive. "'Fore I'd be afraid of a little rain!" she
said severely, an answer which caused Arnold to seem disconcerted, and
again to look at her hard with the startled expression of arrested
attention which from the first her remarks and strictures seemed to
cause in him.
They took the pinto out. Judith rode him bareback at a gallop down
to the swimming pool and dived from his back into the yellow water
shimmering hotly in the sun.
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