He glanced speculatively at the carriage again. Cleggett sprang towards the broken vehicle, expecting to find someone seriously injured at the very least. But, from the ruin, a precise and high-pitched feminine voice piped out:
"Jefferson! Kindly assist me to disentangle myself!"
"Yassum," said the negro, moving forward in a leisurely and dignified manner, "comin', ma'am. I hopes an' trusts, Miss Pringle, ma'am, yo' ain't suffered none in yo' anatomy an' phlebotomy from dis hyeah runaway."
With which cheerful wish Jefferson lifted respectfully, and with a certain calm detachment, the figure of a woman from the debris.
"Thank you, Jefferson," she said. "I fear I am very much bruised and shaken, but I have been feeling all my bones while lying there, and I believe that I have sustained no fractures."
Miss Pringle was a woman of about fifty, small and prim. Prim with an unconquerable primness that neither storm nor battle nor accident could shake. If she had been killed in the runaway she would have looked prim in death while awaiting the undertaker. She must have been wet almost to those unfractured bones which she had been feeling; her black silk dress, with its white ruching about the neck, was torn and bedraggled; her black hat, with its jet ornaments, was crushed and hung askew over one ear; nevertheless, Miss Pringle conveyed at once and definitely an impression of unassailable respectability and strong character.
"Which of you is Mr. Cleggett?" she asked, looking about her, in the lantern light, at the crew of the Jasper B., as she leaned upon the arm of Jefferson, her mannerly and deliberate servitor.
"I am Mr. Cleggett."
"Ah!" Miss Pringle inspected him with an eye which gleamed with a hint of latent possibilities of belligerency. "Mr. Cleggett," she continued, pursing her lips, "I have sought an interview to warn you that you are harboring an impostor on your ship."
At that moment Lady Agatha joined the group. As the light fell upon her Miss Pringle stepped forward and thrust an accusing, a denunciatory finger at the Englishwoman.