We travel ahead in the buckboard."
Seated by Teddy in a feather-weight buckboard, behind a pair of wild,
cream-coloured Spanish ponies, Octavia abandoned all thought for the
exhilaration of the present. They swept out of the little town and
down the level road toward the south. Soon the road dwindled and
disappeared, and they struck across a world carpeted with an endless
reach of curly mesquite grass. The wheels made no sound. The tireless
ponies bounded ahead at an unbroken gallop. The temperate wind, made
fragrant by thousands of acres of blue and yellow wild flowers, roared
gloriously in their ears. The motion was aerial, ecstatic, with a
thrilling sense of perpetuity in its effect. Octavia sat silent,
possessed by a feeling of elemental, sensual bliss. Teddy seemed to be
wrestling with some internal problem.
"I'm going to call you madama," he announced as the result of his
labours. "That is what the Mexicans will call you--they're nearly
all Mexicans on the ranch, you know. That seems to me about the proper
thing."
"Very well, Mr. Westlake," said Octavia, primly.
"Oh, now," said Teddy, in some consternation, "that's carrying the
thing too far, isn't it?"
"Don't worry me with your beastly etiquette. I'm just beginning to
live.
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