FROM THE LIFE
tacked up together over a writing-desk; and invariably the stranger would say: "Who are all the good-looking girls? I recognize Jane Shore, but who are the others?"
Take, for example, the earliest anecdote about her that I have. It is the story of how, at the age of six, she rode her pony into a corner drug-store and demanded of the soda-fountain clerk that he serve her and her Shetland with ice-cream soda. She did it with childish seriousness, and the young clerk humored her by pretending to water the pony with fizzy drink while she had her glass in the saddle. And you might consider the incident typical of her imperious directness and unconventionality if there were not ground for suspicion that she knew exactly what she was doing, knew that the clerk would be amused by it, and knew that the story would be relished by her parents.
And the ground for this suspicion is found in the following consideration:
Once, when she was no more than eight, she was out driving with her father—behind the fastest and most vicious of the young horses that he delighted to fight and master—when the breeching of the harness broke, going down a hill, and the frightened animal, being butted into by the carriage, kicked back at the whiffletree, broke one of the shafts, put a hoof through the dashboard, and then bolted, with the harness breaking anew at every plunge and the hanging shaft prodding him on.
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