“Who’s about doin’ it?” growled Andrew. “Sit down, lassie. Don’t tak’ the fling-strings or ye’ll hae us in the ditch. I’m just for driving on to the top o’ yon hill, there; then I’ll come back an’ free him—I’ll come back an’ win’-free him.”
The girl half loosed her hold, but a glance at the chauffeur’s leaking eye-corners and she was upon him fiercely again.
“You mean—you mean you’ll come back and kill him—knock him on the head with an iron ‘jack’ or a club. Oh! I won’t have it. I won’t have it,” she raved. “’Tisn’t the time for killing foxes, any way. We m-must, we can, we may free him now, somehow—somehow.”
She was jabbering like the wild thing, herself, all the while that something was struggling to the fore in her—hereditary resourcefulness—the inventor’s ingenuity.
Revelation came, as it always does, in a staggering flash.
She whipped round upon her girl companion, so white-cheeked and whimpering.
“Your c-coat, Una!” She seized upon the fine beaver, which had, presumably, been stripped from some trapped animal, too—but that did not at the moment matter. “Your fur coat! We could throw it over him, hold him down, while—while Andrew springs the trap.”
“Do ye think I’m a madded fool?” came angrily from the chauffeur.
“Oh! we don’t. We know you’re a brick. We know you’ll help us. Oh! don’t you—don’t you see how this would spoil all the trip?”
She shivered—and in the paling forgetmenot blue of the eyes near his own Andrew saw the blight that would fall over the hiking start, at least, and cursed his luck that they should meet up with the “black cow”—misfortune—this early in the day.