“You need not bring flowers for me, Frederick,” said Mrs Thorne, in an aggrieved tone. “I am growing too old for flowers now.”
“Too old? Ha, ha, ha!” he cried. “Why, you look younger than ever. Smithson asked me the other day if you and Hazel were my daughters.”
“Did he, Frederick,” said Mrs Thorne, in a rather less lachrymose tone.
“To be sure he did; and of course I am going to bring you a bouquet as well.”
He bought the two bouquets, and they were kept fresh in water, taken to pieces, and spread over his breast, as he lay cold and stern in his coffin: for as he was carefully bearing the box containing the flowers across Waterloo Place on his way home that evening, there was a cry, a shout, the rush of wheels, and the trampling of horses; a barouche came along Pall Mall at a furious rate, with two ladies therein clinging to the sides, and the coachman and footman panic-stricken on the box. One rein had broken, and the horses tore round the corner towards Regent Street as if mad with fear.
It was a gallant act, and people said at the inquest that it saved the ladies and the servants, but it was at the sacrifice of his own life. For, dropping the box he was carrying, Fred Thorne, a hale strong man of five-and-forty, dashed at the horses’ heads, caught one by the bit and held on, to be dragged fifty or sixty yards, and crushed against the railings of one of the houses.
He stopped the horses, and was picked up by the crowd that gathered round.
“Stop a moment, he wants to say something—he is only stunned—here, get some water—what say, sir!”
“My—poor—darlings!”
They were Fred Thorne’s last words, uttered almost with his last breath.