"It's an animal!" cried the girl, tugging with all her might. "Quick! Help!"
Miss Elting ran forward, now really alarmed, the frightened Tommy still clinging to her skirts. Then came a voice, a male voice raised in angry protest.
"Leggo my whiskers, consarn ye!" it shouted. "Leggo, I tell ye. It's Jasper."
There followed a scuffle and a fall, as Jasper in trying to rise from the suit cases that he had been carrying, fell over them. He landed on his back, shouting angrily. Harriet sat down in the road overcome by a sudden weakness, then she laughed. The other girls, now that the tension had snapped, were laughing also, all except Tommy who was so frightened that she could not say a word.
"Jasper, what do you mean by frightening us in this manner?" demanded Miss Elting severely. "First, you run away from us then you frighten us nearly out of our wits."
"Yaas. Mebby ye think it's fun to pull a man's whiskers out when he ain't looking. I sot down here on them bags to rest. I was waitin' for ye to come up seein' as I'd got ahead. Then one of 'em had to come blundering along and fall over me. Before I knowd what had hit me, the other—I don't know who she is in the dark—lighted on my whiskers like a pesky mosquito," complained the driver.
Harriet ceased her laughing at once. She got up, stepping carefully over to the place where the driver was standing nursing his injured whiskers.
"It was I who pulled your whiskers, Mr. Jasper," she said. "I am so sorry. But—but I thought you were some sort of animal and—and——"
Harriet's concluding words were lost in a shout of laughter from the girls.
There was nothing more to be said. Harriet felt so humiliated that she was glad they were unable to see her face.