“Good heavens!” said Mr Fanshawe. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Sure, I trusted Larry, sir,” said Patsy. “He knows more thin Dan about the traps and the harness any day in the——Holy Mary! there’s the wheel goin’.”
“Hold tight,” cried Mr Fanshawe.
“We’re over,” cried Patsy.
A perfectly superfluous statement delivered from the ditch where he lay with Miss Lestrange’s dressing-bag on his chest. You could have heard the sound of the smash half a mile down the silent road.
“I’m all right,” murmured the girl. “Where am I? O Dicky!”
She was sitting on the road against the hedge bank. The broken-down dogcart with one wheel off lay before her, also Fly-by-night on her side, with Patsy seated on the mare’s head.
“It’s all right,” said Mr Fanshawe, “it’s only a smash up. Nothing matters as long as you aren’t hurt.”
She gazed at the ruins before her, and took in the whole extent of the catastrophe, as did Mr Fanshawe. The position was horrible. Any moment the pursuer might arrive, and then what was to be done? He could not fight his uncle, there was nothing possible except ignominious capitulation. When you are successful in an affair of this kind you are an object of admiration to every one, especially the women. To run away with a woman is the only excuse for a man ever running away; let the woman be subtracted and the excuse is gone, and the man is an object of derision to every one—especially the women.