First you would notice an old wooden cradle, painted blue, that stood in a corner.

A button-eyed, blank-faced rag doll, the size of a baby at the fist-sucking age, was tucked neatly under the red-and-white patchwork quilt made to fit the cradle.

Hanging directly over the cradle by a stirrup was Jean's first saddle,--a cheap pigskin affair with harsh straps and buckles, that her father had sent East for.

Jean never had liked that saddle, even when it was new.

She used to stand perfectly still while her father buckled it on the little buckskin pony she rode; and she would laugh when he picked her up and tossed her into the seat.
She would throw her dad a kiss and go galloping off down the trail,--but when she was quite out of sight around the bend of the bench-land, she would stop and take the saddle off, and hide it in a certain clump of wild currant bushes, and continue her journey bareback.