Further conversation along these lines was stopped at that moment because the beast stepped on its foot, or did something equally absurd, that caused it to limp along on three legs for a few yards and then stop.
I got out and looked at its hoof—somewhat gingerly, for I am not used to horses. It did not seem to be suffering pain but it looked at me out of its well eye and seemed to say, “This is where I stop.”
I climbed into the cart and I tightened the reins and clucked and applied the whip, but to no purpose. The horse looked around at me in a languid way, but he refused to budge.
“Nice,” said I, looking at my watch. “Quarter to five, and we’ve got at least two miles to go yet. I wonder how Pat starts him.”
“He used languages,” said Ethel suggestively.
“Thanks. So he did.”
Once more I pulled on the reins, clucked and plupped and whipped (not viciously, but ticklingly) and once more the horse did not move.
“To hell wid ye,” said I suddenly, and it worked like a charm. The old beast took up his ungraceful trot, and we jolted along to the station.
I had meant to hitch the horse on the outskirts of Egerton and walk up to the station in style, but as we neared the Congregational Church I saw that it lacked but two minutes of train time, and so setting aside pride, in my anxiety to meet our guest, I whipped him up the incline that leads to the station, and just as we drove up to the platform the train pulled in, and out of the drawing-room car came Cherry, pretty and pink and smiling. She waved to us and then, when she saw our equipage, she shook her own hands in a manner indicative of delight, and not waiting for me to come and help her, she ran down the steps of the car and hastened over to us.
“How lovely,” said she, kissing Ethel, but refraining from kissing me. “Are we to go up in it?”