Horse Sense by Bonnie Bryant Page A

and Estelle.” Carole and Stevie exchanged glances. “Red is so worried that somebody’s going to get hurt that he’ll barely let us trot. You’d think he’d let us do something more daring, like cantering, more often,” Lisa said.
    “Well, you certainly can,” Stevie began. “I don’t know about Estelle, though. She seems pretty green to me.”
    “Oh, no,” Lisa said. “She’s been riding for years—since she was five.”
    “She has?”
    “Yes, and she has her own horse and her family has this country home with a stable near Paris where they go on weekends. They’re all just as horse crazy as we are. But they do things differently in France, that’s all.She has to get used to the American way of doing things.”
    “Girls,” Mrs. Reg called from her office. “Not so much gabbing, please. There’s a lot of work to be done today. All of the dressage saddles are positively dingy and we’ll need them for the upcoming show. Now, see if you can finish those before your next class.”
    “I think it’s running in the family today,” Stevie whispered. The three girls burst into giggles—and then muffled them right away so Mrs. Reg wouldn’t hear.
    “You still talking in there?” she called out.
    “No ma’am,” Carole said politely. “We’re not talking anymore.”
    “Right, we’re just giggling,” Stevie whispered to her friends. “That’s more fun anyway.”
    “Which are the dressage saddles?” Lisa asked.
    “Those over there,” Carole said, pointing to ten saddles stored together. “See how the flap is straight on both sides and how the rider will sit back in the saddle? It gives the rider more control over the horse. Wait’ll you see. When dressage is done right, it’s fantastic.”
    “Girls!”
    Lisa hung up the bridle she’d been working on and brought one of the dressage saddles over to clean. They’d each have to do three, and then whoever finished first could do the last one while the other two cleaned up. It wouldn’t be so bad if they worked together, she thought.
    A T THREE O’CLOCK , Stevie, Lisa, and Carole were all together again, this time for drill practice. Normally, Stevie wasn’t particularly interested in things that required such precision. Her whole personality was more flamboyant. But this drill work was just plain fun as far as she was concerned.
    “What we’re working on now is something I call the clover leaf,” Max explained. “Normally, it’s a four-leaf clover, but with just three of you, a three-leafer is better. But harder.”
    With that, he explained how each rider was to lead off on her own “leaf” in a clockwise path, leading into the next rider’s leaf.
    “The whole pleasure here for the audience is seeing how you
don’t
run into each other at the cross. Try it.”
    Carole led off on the bottom right leaf. Stevie followed, two trotting paces later, on the upright leaf. Lisa went last, two paces after Stevie. Somehow, magically, when it came to the cross, Carole passed through first, then Stevie, then Lisa.
    “Wonderful, girls! That was
great
. I’ve seen so-called experts who couldn’t manage that maneuver anywhere near as well as you can. You three work together
so
well! Now, try it again, but keep it going as long as you can.”
    It turned out that “as long as you can” was only three times through the exercise. By then, Carole was well ahead of the other riders, and Lisa and Stevie were practically ramming into each other at the cross.
    “It’s still good,” Max told them. “At least you could get through it enough times so each of you could complete the clover. You should be proud of what you can do together.”
    Stevie was beaming with the pleasure of success, and one glance at her friends confirmed that they were feeling the same way. But was this really
Max
talking?
    “What I want you to do next is to begin trotting at the edge of the ring, evenly spaced and proceeding in a circle. As I instruct you, make your circle