“He’d be all right with you behind him,” declared Joe Savage.
“That’s Dick Merriwell!” piped a small boy, bursting with enthusiastic admiration. “Ain’t he jest a peacherino!”
“Boy, it’s marvelous!” declared a man. “You deserve great credit. It may be that you saved this girl’s life! She shouldn’t forget that.”
“I won’t!” murmured June, loud enough for Dick to hear.
The driver took the horse by the head.
“I’ll hold him,” he said, “while you get out. I don’t know how I can thank you for keeping him from smashing the carriage and injuring himself.”
“Where is my bicycle?” asked the boy from whose hands Dick had snatched the wheel.
“Here it comes,” Dick answered, noting that the two men in the team were approaching, with the ruined bicycle held before them. “But I’m afraid you’ll never ride it again.”
“Well, that’s pretty tough on me,” said the boy, sadly, yet plainly trying to keep from showing his grief. “I won that for a prize in a race at the county fair this fall. But I ain’t going to fuss over it as long as you stopped the horse and kept her from being hurt.”
“Perhaps you’ll get another one, all right,” said Dick. “I think you will, even if I have to pay for it.”