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for vacations. That’s when I ride him. At other times, the stable manager exercises him for me, you see?”
    Lisa
did
see. Her mind’s eye built a spacious country estate with a large barn and rolling hills where horses frolicked gracefully through the spring flowers in the pastures. Liveried staff tended to the home while the Duvals were in Paris, and catered to their every whim when they returned to the country. It seemed so incredibly elegant that Lisa could hardly believe it was true.
    “You know, Estelle, I haven’t been riding very long,” Lisa explained. “I just started a few months ago. I really love it, though, and every time I hear about somebody like you, who has been riding since she was really little, well, it makes me wish I’d started it a longtime ago, too. I hate to think of all the wonderful rides I missed!”
    “But Lisa, all the rides are
not
wonderful,” Estelle corrected her.
    “You mean like all the trouble you had with Nero today?”
    “Well, that too, but let me tell you about the pony I had
before
Napoleon. That one was a mare. Her name was Étoile—French for ‘star’ because of the perfect five-pointed star on her forehead. But it was the only perfect thing about her. One day I was riding her. I was just a little girl then, of course. By mistake, I happened to tug at her mane when I was standing up in the saddle, trying to get my balance. It must have hurt her terribly, for right away, she began trying to kick at me with her hind foot. I pulled the reins to make her stop. Then I climbed down from her saddle right there in the middle of the field, and I told Maman I was never going to ride the beast again!”
    Estelle laughed so hard at the story that Lisa began laughing, too. She could just see the stubborn child informing her mother she was through. But she couldn’t see herself trying the same thing with Max! Max certainly wouldn’t force people to ride if they didn’t enjoy it. But there was no way he would let somebody quit just because one bad thing happened—even a nasty fall. Lisa decided it was a good thing for Estelle that Max wasn’t her mother.
    The two girls strolled across the parking lot of the little shopping center. It wasn’t really a mall. It only boasted a supermarket, a few shoe stores, a drugstore, amusic store, a jewelry store, and the ice cream parlor, TD’s. If what you wanted after riding class was an icecream sundae, there was no place better than TD’s. Lisa paused at TD’s, but there was no sign of Stevie or Carole. Realizing they must have been delayed, she continued to walk with Estelle.
    Together, the girls went into the jewelry store. Estelle spoke with the salesman for a long time, though Lisa couldn’t hear what she was saying. Lisa loved jewelry and always had fun looking at it. She could imagine a day when she might have long conversations with jewelers the way Estelle was, but for now, she satisfied herself with glancing at the costume jewelry section. She looked at the pins under the glass counter. There, in the center, was a pin with the silhouette of a horse head superimposed on a horseshoe. The horse’s ears were perked alertly, his mane brushed slightly by the wind. The whole effect was so pretty that it nearly took Lisa’s breath away. Somehow, that pin seemed to represent everything Lisa loved about horses. If only …
    “Oh, this man can’t help me at all,” Estelle whined, interrupting Lisa’s thoughts. “I have wasted my time!”
    “Not exactly,” Lisa consoled her, turning from the showcase with the horse-head pin. “We got to walk together and have a nice talk.”
    “Let’s get out of here,” Estelle said, leading Lisa back onto the shopping center sidewalk. “You have to meet your friends now, no?”
    “Oh, yes,” Lisa said, heading for TD’s. But even beforeshe entered the ice cream shop, she could see through the window that neither Stevie nor Carole was there yet. She wondered what had happened. How