It was all very well for her to take it in this light-hearted spirit, and Peggy rather admired her for it. But she must have had a very rough time, for her dress was all torn, and her wrists were scarred where the rope had bound them. As she spoke she was rubbing them, to restore the circulation, and she looked white, and as if she might faint at any moment.
Fortunately, there was a little pool of water quite near, and Colonel Jim, who showed himself kind and useful in this emergency, filled his helmet with water and gave it to her to drink, as she sat on the ground again with Wooden kneeling by her side and holding her.
“Ah, that’s better,” she said, smacking her lips, when she had had a good drink. “I’ve been looking at that pond and wishing I could get at it. Drat that Selim! I wish I could get at him! I’d mark him.”
She said these last sentences in her usual vigorous way, which showed that she was recovering; and when she had rested a little longer, they got her story out of her.
“They’d said we was going to be took to the palace,” she said, “and at first I didn’t think nothing of going such a long way round. None of us didn’t. But by-and-by Lady Grace says, ‘I wonder who’s in the first carriage,’ she says. ‘Oh, I’ll soon find that out,’ I says, and I pokes my head out of window and hollers out to the driver, ‘Hi, Mister! Who have you got in front there?’”
“Was that before or after you had passed the inn where they got some water?” asked the Lord Chancellor.
“Never you mind whether it was before or after,” said Wooden’s aunt. “I’m telling this story, and I’m going to tell it in my own way.”
This was not very polite of her, but she had been through a great deal, and her nerves were in an irritable state. The Lord Chancellor asked no more questions, and she finished her story to the end.
She said the coachman told her that it was the King who was in the first carriage, and advised her not to put her head out of window again as he had orders to hit anybody who did so with his whip.