During the years that followed many were the governesses set up by Mrs. Bryce to be promptly knocked down, as it were, by Isabelle. They would either depart of their own accord, or they would be sent flying by the irate Mrs. Bryce after some escapade of her incorrigible offspring.
"She'll end in a reform school!" she remarked to Wally one day, upon the dismissal of the latest one.
He sought out his daughter and laboured with her.
"Look here, kid, how many governesses have you had lately?"
"Get rid of 'em, they're no good. Can't you get Max to let me have Ann again?"
"I won't have any of these she gets me--old snoops!"
"She does the best she can," Wally defended.
"She does not. She doesn't even look at 'em, just telephones for one to be sent out. Let's you and me go pick out another one, Wally."
"I'm sorry, but your mother won't stand for it. Ann gave her a piece of her mind before she left, and Max blames me for it."
"If she'd get Ann, I'd be so good she'd never have to change again."
"I did. It makes her mad. You tell her, Wally."
"If you get mad back and yell at her, she stops. That's what I do," she advised him.
"Look here, it would be a lot more comfortable for you to put up with some woman, even if you don't like her. You always have to get used to a new one."
"I don't. They have to get used to me," the imp replied. "Where you going?" she added.
"Can't look after you and that horse, too."
"I'm not a baby," she scorned him. "Tell them to bring the pony round, Wally."
Later when she threw her breeched leg over her horse, and waited for Wally to mount, he exclaimed:
They started off. She had discarded the old Shetland pony as too childish, and demanded a real steed. So Wally had given her a small Peruvian horse, delicately made and fleet of foot. She rode him like a leaf on the wind. She jumped hedges and fences and ditches; she did circus tricks, and finally nagged Wally's Nero into a race.
"You're some rider, Isabelle," he said, on the way home.
At the door Matthews, the butler, announced that the new governess had arrived.
Wally reproved her sharply, but she was inattentive.
"Let's fire her, Wally, and you take care of me."
"Would you like that?" he said, touched by this unusual mark of affection.