Free Stable Manners by Bonnie Bryant Page A

learned something this afternoon, Lisa,” Carole continued.
    “We’re going to have to tell about the study sheets, aren’t we?” Stevie asked.
    Carole nodded. So did Lisa.
    “I kept trying to figure it out so we wouldn’t have to do it. I kept thinking how much fun it would be to score perfectly while Phil was there. I almost had myself convinced.”
    “What made you see it the other way?” Lisa asked.
    “It was thinking about the horses—really what you just said. Nickel couldn’t tell you what to do. We can learn everything Max puts on the Know-Down, but what do we do when something comes up that wasn’t on the Know-Down question sheets?
    “The horses have to come first,” Carole said, summing up all of their arguments.
    Lisa pulled a comb through Samson’s tangled mane and spoke thoughtfully. “You know, I used to think that learning just meant studying. That was hard enough work. Today I’m finding that learning can be a lot harder than just studying.”
    Stevie and Carole knew exactly what she meant. They also knew that the hardest part probably wasn’t over yet. They still had to face Max and Carole still had to face her father.
    The decision was made. Samson was perfectly groomed. There could be no more delays. The three of them packed up Stevie’s grooming gear and went to face the music in Max’s office.
    Max was there and so were the parent volunteers. The girls didn’t like the idea of having a public audience, but the parents would all know soon enough. The hardest was the fact that Colonel Hanson was there. He smiled brightly at Carole. She hated to think how much she was about to hurt him.
    “Max, there’s something we have to tell you,” Lisa began. While Lisa didn’t know very much about hitching a pony to a cart, she knew a lot about explaining things clearly. She first described what had happened to each of their sets of study sheets and how the three of them found themselves at Carole’s house without anything to study from. Then Carole took over. She spoke to Max, but her words were for her father.
    “We didn’t mean to be snooping or anything. It was just that we needed the study sheets and I knew Dad had put them on his desk. It never occurred to any of us that what the parent volunteers got from you was any different from what the pony clubbers had gotten.”
    “We just didn’t know,” Stevie said, taking over. “We made copies and we got to work. We’ve been working very hard, too. You can test us if you want. But we’ve been working on the wrong thing—ormaybe it was the right thing, but anyway, we figured out that it was the wrong thing to do.”
    Lisa finished for them. “We’re sorry, Max. We really are. We didn’t mean to do this. For a little while after we discovered it, it seemed like a great thing, but in the end we know it’s just not right. We need to learn everything there is to know about horses—not just what we’re going to be tested on.”
    Colonel Hanson stood by the door of Max’s office. His face didn’t reveal anything. Max sat down and blew a chestful of air out through his pursed lips. Nobody said anything for a few minutes.
    “You know what this means, don’t you?” Max asked.
    “Disqualified? Are we out?” Carole asked. She didn’t want to miss the Know-Down, but even more than that, she didn’t want to have to tell Cam about it all.
    “No, I don’t think so,” Max said. “I suspect you three have been working very hard. In fact, judging by what else I’ve seen today, I suspect you’ve been working on the Know-Down material only.” He glanced at Lisa. She looked at the floor. “No, what it means is that I’m going to have to make up new questions.”
    “It’s going to be a lot more work and we’re really sorry,” said Stevie.
    “I don’t mind the work,” Max said. “What I mind is that I thought I had made the meanest, sneakiest, and toughest questions possible out of that material on the study sheets. Now I