Fear touched Bobby with a chilly finger. Had he mistaken the place perhaps? Had Sargon strayed away in spite of his promise, or crept back numbed and wretched to the warmth and shelter of the asylum? Bobby followed the ditch down to the corner of the wood, and beyond the corner in the ditch to the right he suddenly beheld a little old woman, a little old woman sitting bunched in a heap on a litter of dry straw and fast asleep. She was wearing a battered black straw hat adorned with a broken black feather, a small black jacket bodice; a sack was drawn over her feet and a second sack thrown shawlwise over her shoulders. She was so crumpled up her face was hidden, all except one bright red ear, and behind her on the bank lay two large stakes tied in the form of a cross. To Bobby she was the most astonishing of apparitions. It was disconcerting enough to discover Sargon gone. It was still more amazing to find him so oddly replaced.
Bobby stood hesitating for the better part of a minute. Should he wake the old thing up and ask her about Sargon, or should he steal away? Nothing, he decided, would be lost by asking.
He went close up to her and coughed. “Excuse me, Madam,” he said.
The sleeper did not awake.
Bobby rustled among the leaves, coughed louder, and asked to be excused again. The sleeper muttered a choking snore, woke with a start, looked up, and revealed the face of Sargon. He stared at Bobby without recognition for a moment and then gave way to an enormous yawn. While he yawned, his blue eyes gathered intelligence and understanding. “I was so cold,” he said. “I took these things from the scarecrow. And the straw was nice and dry to sit on. Shall we put it all back?”
“Oh, glorious idea!” cried Bobby, with all his spirits restored. “It makes an honest woman of you. Can you walk in that sack? No, we haven’t time to put it back. Shake it down off your legs and bring it with you. The side-car isn’t two hundred yards away. You’ll be able to put it on again then. This is magnificent! This is wonderful! Certainly we won’t put it back. Off we’ll go, and when we’ve a good ten miles between us and the asylum we’ll stop and get some hot coffee and something to eat.”
“Hot coffee!” said Sargon, brightening visibly. “And bacon and eggs?”
“Hot coffee and bacon and eggs,” said Bobby.
“The coffee there is—beastly,” said Sargon.
Bobby helped Sargon into the side-car and raised the hood over him, erected the wind-screen, and so packed him away. He became a quite passable aunt, dimly seen. And in another minute Bobby had kicked the engine into an impatient fuss and was in the saddle.