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a bucket, she couldn’tget the gooey marshmallow out of the spoon and into the bucket. After the third try at shaking it loose, she threw
that
across the ring as well, so it landed near the abandoned Hula-Hoop.
    Something told Lisa this was no time to try to talk to Stevie. As quietly as she had come, she left, going into the tack room. There, she quickly spotted Stevie’s shoes. She rolled up a copy of the rules and stuck it into one of Stevie’s shoes, leaving a note about the Thursday meeting at TD’s.
    Stevie would find the note there and they could talk about the new rules on Thursday at TD’s. She was sure Stevie would be in a better mood by then. Well, pretty sure.
    Lisa fetched her own sandwich and soda from the refrigerator and looked for a place to eat. Just as she stepped into the stall area, she saw Estelle Duval, the new French girl, eating alone.
    “Can I sit down?” Lisa asked.
    “
Mais, oui
,” Estelle said. “Of course.”
    Lisa just loved the sound of her accent.

O N T HURSDAY AFTERNOON , Lisa couldn’t find Stevie and Carole after camp was over. It was time for The Saddle Club meeting at TD’s—their favorite ice cream store, in the nearby shopping center—and it was an important meeting, too. It was the meeting Lisa had called so they could discuss and approve all the rules she’d written.
    When she couldn’t find her friends, Lisa decided they must have left for TD’s, thinking
she’d
already gone. She changed into her jeans and street shoes and set out for the shopping center, a little annoyed to have been left behind.
    As soon as she crossed the roadway, Lisa spotted Estelle walking in the same direction she was headed. She and Estelle had eaten lunch together two days in arow and Lisa was really getting to like her. She was so chic, so sophisticated, so nice!
    It surprised Lisa that Estelle seemed to want to be her friend. After all, Estelle had told her she had been riding since she was a toddler, and most of the friends she talked about were really fancy people, like princes and counts and children of diplomats. She’d been to school in several different countries and spoke four languages. Lisa only spoke English, a few words of French, and pig latin!
    “Hey, Estelle! Wait up!” Lisa called, and jogged up to the French girl. “Which way are you going?” she asked.
    “I’m going to the little shopping center,” Estelle told her. “I wanted to see if there is a jewelry store there. I have a necklace that needs to have a new gold chain.”
    “Well, I’m going that way, too, though I don’t have to buy any jewelry today,” Lisa joked. Then she explained she was meeting friends at TD’s. “You were having some trouble today on Nero, weren’t you?” she asked after a moment as they continued on their way.
    “Oh?” Estelle said. She seemed to be surprised that Lisa had noticed, but the fact was that everybody had noticed. Nero had ended up doing almost exactly what he’d wanted to do all through the class. That was really bad. Lisa had been taught from her very first lesson that a rider had to be the one in control, and the horse needed to know it.
    “Nero was in such a bad mood!” Estelle explained. “You see, I am much more used to my own horse,Napoleon. He would never behave that way.”
    “Your own horse!” Lisa exclaimed. “And you had to leave him in France, I guess. You must miss him a lot.”
    “I certainly do. He’s a white horse, a beautiful stallion. He was a gift to me from a friend of my father’s—the ambassador,” she explained. “But I have had him since my seventh birthday. I rode him for hours that day, and every day since, when I am at home. He never acted so naughty like Nero was today.”
    “I thought you lived in the city of Paris. Do you keep him in the city?” Lisa asked, recalling her earlier conversations with Estelle.
    “Oh—uh, no, but he is kept at our country home in Normandy, northwest of Paris. We go there on weekends and