But the trouble was that the thing would not stop, and that there would be no stop now—he knew—for several miles. Perspiring, panting, hallooing and waving his stick and utterly oblivious of the scandalized street, he pursued at his swiftest, and Methusalem being no serious competitor in the long run, Jinny heard him at last, and looking back through the tilt over the dwindled packages, saw the pitiful, gesturing figure, and to his infinite relief the cart drew up.
“What have you lost now?” she called. “Your sandwich-boards?”
“I’m not going back to Miss Flippance,” he panted, “I’m going Bradmarsh way.”
“Then why ever didn’t you say so?” she replied calmly. “Jump up!”
Jump up? She asked a strange young man to jump up? Then what else could she have done if he had said who he was—a fact of which he had indeed been just about to make royal proclamation.
“You take passengers?” he gasped. He remembered now that Joey had told him the cart would take him, but then he had had no idea that “her” was not the vehicle.
She was equally surprised: “Why else did you run after me?”
Run after her? He did not like the phrase. Girls ran after men—girls of a sort—to some extent girls of every sort: that was the doctrine in his set. And yet he had run after her—it called for explanation. “I wasn’t running after you,” he said slowly, “it was only that—that I couldn’t believe my eyes to see you like that.”
“Like what?” She was frankly puzzled.
“Driving about alone in this God-forsaken part. It’s—” scandalous, he was about to say, but before the glimmering fire in her eyes he altered the word—“it’s dangerous.”