Horse Trouble by Bonnie Bryant Page A

with his horse. Then came a tricky part. Pine Hollow’s riders sometimes joked that the place was built on traditions, because it had an awful lot of them. One of the most important, however, was the good-luck horseshoe. Every rider was supposed to touch the horseshoe nailed up by the door before going out on a ride. No rider at Pine Hollow had ever been badly hurt, and tradition held that it was because of the horseshoe.
    Lisa couldn’t manage a long explanation, but shecould demonstrate. She mounted Barq, touched the shoe, and looked at the ambassador.
“Fer à cheval pour bonne chance,”
she said. He smiled at her and touched it as well. He’d understood! She was very pleased with herself. She felt as though she were riding on a new high as she led the way out the door and off to the trail through the field. She waved gaily at her jump classmates when they passed by.
    “Au revoir,”
Stevie called. Lisa and the ambassador both shouted
“Au revoir”
back at her. That was French for good-bye, and it really meant “until we see one another again.” That sounded so much nicer than “good-bye.” Lisa found herself beginning to love the French language. That feeling made it much easier to speak in it, too. And as she spoke, she found that she lost some of her self-consciousness. Pretty soon she and her charge were chatting easily about various things that Lisa hadn’t even known she knew how to say. She was, in fact, having fun, and so was the man who was riding with her.
    She wanted to tell him about The Saddle Club. She had the feeling that this nice man would really understand. He was a good rider, and he was very friendly. Since those were the two basic requirements for membership, she wanted to explain it.
    “Moi et mes amies,”
she began. “
Nous avons un
, uh,
une
, oh, drat,
une
 …” She groped for something that would be like the word “club” in French, but nothing came to her. “I just can’t remember the word for ‘club’ in French,” she said, and then shrugged sheepishly to convey to him that she was at a loss.
    “I can’t remember it, either,” the man said. “But I suspect it’s something like
club
or
associacion
. Anyway, why don’t we try English for a while?”
    It took Lisa about eight very long seconds to register what she’d just heard and what it really sounded like. In those eight seconds, she realized that she’d heard English spoken, and it wasn’t accented English, unless you counted a pleasant southern Virginia drawl.
    “You’re not the French ambassador—you’re not even French!” she stammered.
    “Of course I am,” the man said. “I’m Michael French. I thought you knew.”
    Mrs. Reg’s list had said it was the French ambassador who was coming to ride. How could she have made a mistake like that? Then Lisa realized it wasn’t Mrs. Reg who had made the mistake. It was The Saddle Club. Mrs. Reg had written “Thursday, 11, Am. French.” She hadn’t meant Am. French. She’d meant eleven A . M ., and she’d just written it a little oddly.
    Lisa wanted to disappear. Right then and there she wanted to find a way to be swallowed up by the earth. How could she have been so silly? There she’d been, speaking sort of pidgin French to this poor man, who really only wanted to ride a horse!
    “Oh, no,” she groaned. “I’m—” She couldn’t even think of the words in English! “I can’t—I mean, it’s so—”
    “Don’t worry!” the man said. He actually sounded cheerful, which struck Lisa as odd. “I’m really very flattered,” he went on. “See, I work for the government in the State Department. I would like nothing more than to be an ambassador. The fact that you thought I was one already—well, you can imagine, I’ve loved every minute of it. Besides, as you surely know, French is the language of diplomacy, and mine’s been getting a little rusty, stuck in an office in Washington as I am. You gave me a chance to speak in French. It was