"We have an old phaeton," said Nan; "it's rather dingy looking, but that is all that is the matter with it, and there is the sleigh. We don't need either since we sold the horses, but mother doesn't like to part with them for the small price we could get for them and she says maybe some day we can afford to keep a horse."
"We must surely see about having our horses here," repeated Ran, and that very night he wrote home to his father to make the request.
A week later the horses arrived and were stabled near-by. Polly Lewis was generous enough to send her mare to one of the girls once in a while and so many a long and delightful ride did the cousins have. Sometimes several of them would pile into the old phaeton and sometimes two would go horseback and the rest would drive. Strange to say, though Mary Lee was so much less impetuous than Nan, and fonder of boys' sports, she sat a horse less well and was never the graceful and fearless rider that Nan was, though many a girl might have envied even her good seat and steady hand.
There were other tourneys, too, when Randolph generally was victor and crowned Jean who was his special favorite, thus causing pangs of jealousy in Jack's ambitious heart. Nan, seeing this, resolved to do her best for Jack's sake and practiced so diligently that once Ran's successes rendering him careless, she actually did take the championship from him and to Jack's great delight, crowned this little sister, making a flowery speech as she did so.
Aunt Sarah smiled contemptuously at these performances which she called "fool nonsense," but since the children kept well, were not in bad company, and did not neglect their school duties, she did not forbid them their exciting plays. After the arrival of the horses belonging to the Gordon boys, Pete was not again expected to play the part of a curvetting steed, but was allowed to rest on his laurels.
[Illustration: CHAPTER VIII THE SUNSET-TREE]
Although the girls had plenty of time for play, Aunt Sarah saw to it that they had no really idle moments. She was the most industrious of persons herself and accomplished wonders which she explained by saying her daily nap of half an hour so fortified her that she could do two days' work in one by taking two rests in the twenty-four hours. She was quick to perceive defects in young people and in a half sarcastic, half humorous way, commented upon them. Upon Jean, such remarks had little effect; they angered Jack, slightly annoyed Mary Lee, but they hurt Nan to the quick, she being the most sensitive of them all. Proud and romantic, high-spirited and impatient, she was often thrown from a pinnacle of eager expectation into the depths of a present discomfort. It was on such occasions that she fled to her nook in the pines which she had finally named "Place o' Pines." Here she would often solace herself by writing to her mother whom she missed, perhaps, more than any of the others did. Reports coming from Mrs. Corner were on the whole favorable. "If I can stay long enough," she wrote, "the doctors give me every hope of entire recovery."