The secret of the Mansion

around much longer, anyway. What have we here?" He pointed to the saddlebags in which Honey had packed the lunch.
    "Sandwiches and cake and milk." Honey smiled. "We’re going to ride through the trails on the other side of Glen Road and have a picnic in the woods."
    "Swell." Jim’s legs were almost as long as Regan’s, so he pulled up the stirrup leather only one notch.
    He was an expert horseman, Trixie could see at once, and, no matter how much Jupiter reared and danced, Jim never moved an inch from the saddle. "You make me think of a centaur," she said. "You sort of blend right into that horse."
    Jim’s green eyes sparkled. "What I wouldn’t give to own this fellow! And I bet I could get his mouth in shape in a couple of weeks. The fellow who schooled Jupe probably used a spade bit on him. That’s why he fights the bit so now. With a little gentle handling, he’d respond to a snaffle in no time."
    "Dad’s got awfully heavy hands," Honey admitted. "He loves horses and is one of the best riders in the squadron, but he hasn’t much patience. He loses his temper very quickly. Sometimes he scares me." She led the way down the rutted road from the Mansion. "He’s like Regan, though. He gets mad and gets over it so fast it sort of leaves you breathless."
    "That’s the kind of guy I like," Jim said as he forced Jupiter to walk down behind Lady. "Jonesy is just the opposite. He broods a lot, and it takes him a long time to work himself up into a rage, and when he does, he goes almost insane. If he beat me in a moment of anger, I wouldn’t mind it so much. Then it would be over and done with quickly. I can tell in the morning when he’s mad about something, and it smolders in him all day long, and I go around waiting for the moment when he’s going to grab me and drag me out to the barn." He chuckled. "He’s working himself up into a lather now, I bet. He’d half kill me if he ever caught me."
    Trixie shuddered inwardly. "That must never happen," she told herself. "Never, never."
    At the foot of the hill, Jim reined in Jupiter behind a clump of bushes while the girls made sine that nobody was in sight. Jupiter reared impatiently. When they had safely crossed Glen Road, Jim let him out. The big horse pounded along the trail, well in the lead, and when Jim thought Jupe had had enough of a run, he stopped and waited for Trixie and Honey to catch up. Foam dripped from the horse’s mouth as he worried the bit. Jim patted his neck soothingly.
    "There, there, boy. They’ve got you all strapped up in a martingale so you can’t rear as high as you’d like, haven’t they? If you were mine," Jim said, half to himself, half aloud, "I’d let you rear your head off.
    I know what it’s like to be tied up. The first time I .ran away, Jonesy caught me and tied me, hand and foot, to the bed for three days. I thought I’d go crazy."
    "Oh," Honey gasped. "How awfull How did you ever have the nerve to run away again?"
    Jim shrugged. "It wasn’t so much nerve as it was sheer desperation. And the straw that broke the camel’s back was the way he jeered when I told him I’d won a scholarship to college. I’d made up my mind, you see, to stick it out for another year, because, once I got into college, the worst would be over. I worked like anything to do two years in one and still keep at the head of the class." He grinned. "And I don’t like to study much, either. Geometry practically threw me, but it was like a game. Anything to get away from Jonesy. And then, when everything was all set, he announced that he wasn’t going to let me go to college. Said it would be a waste of time, because I’d flunk out the first year. Gosh, it was all I could do to keep from socking him."
    "I don’t see why you didn’t," Trixie cried impulsively. "I bet you could beat him up."
    Jim laughed. "I don’t know about that. Jonesy’s a powerful man, even though he’s so stoop-shouldered he isn’t much taller than I am. But, anyway, you don’t go around socking older people. You just beat it."
    "Whatever do you suppose made him such a beast?" Honey wondered. "He sounds crazy to me."
    "He is crazy," Jim told her. "Crazy about money. You might think Uncle James was a miser, Trixie, but you don’t know Jonesy. He’s kept books on how much it’s cost him ever since I went to live with him. He put down every penny he gave me for a pad or pencil, even postage stamps, and he watched every mouthful of food I ate, weighing and measuring