Those who know caravans know that they must never gallop: not, that is, if the contents are to remain unbroken and the occupants unbruised. They also know that no gate is more than exactly wide enough to admit of their passing through it, and that unless the passing through is calculated and carried out to a nicety the caravan that emerges will not be the caravan that went in. Providence that first evening was on my side, for I never got through any subsequent gate with an equal neatness. My heart had barely time to leap into my mouth before we were through and out in the road, and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, catching hold of the bridle, was able to prevent the beast’s doing what was clearly in his eye, turn round to the left after his mate with a sharpness that would have snapped the Elsa in two.
Edelgard, rather pale, scrambled down. The sight of our caravan heaving over inequalities or lurching as it was turned round was a sight I never learned to look at without a tightened feeling about the throat. Anxiously I asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh, when the horse, having reached the rear of the Ilsa, had settled down again, what would happen if I did not get through the next gate with an equal skill.
“Everything may happen,” said she, “from the scraping off of the varnish to the scraping off of a wheel.
“But this is terrible,” I cried. “What would we do with one wheel too few?”
“We couldn’t do anything till there was a new one.”
I stopped. Aspects of the tour were revealed to me which had not till then been illuminated. “It depends,” said she, answering my unfinished question, “whose wheel it was.”
“And suppose my dear wife,” I inquired after a pause during which many thoughts surged within me, “should have the misfortune to break, say, a cup?”
“A new cup would have to be provided.”
“And would I—but suppose cups are broken by circumstances over which I have no control?”