We were coming home from evensong, [p86] Kitty and I. (I am anticipating, for she was still ‘Miss Schuyler’ then, but never mind.) We were walking through the fields, while Mrs. Benedict and Aunt Celia were driving. As we came across a corner of the bit of meadow land that joins the stable and the garden, we heard a muffled roar, and as we looked around we saw a creature with tossing horns and waving tail making for us, head down, eyes flashing. Kitty gave a shriek. We chanced to be near a pair of low bars. I hadn’t been a college athlete for nothing. I swung Kitty over the bars, and jumped after her. But she, not knowing in her fright where she was nor what she was doing, supposing also that the mad creature, like the villain in the play, would ‘still pursue her,’ flung herself bodily into my arms, crying, ‘Jack! Jack! save me!’
It was the first time she had called me ‘Jack,’ and I needed no second invitation. [p87] I proceeded to save her, in the usual way, by holding her to my heart and kissing her lovely hair reassuringly as I murmured:
‘You are safe, my darling; not a hair of your precious head shall be hurt. Don’t be frightened.’
She shivered like a leaf.
‘I am frightened,’ she said; ‘I can’t help being frightened. He will chase us, I know. Where is he? What is he doing now?’
Looking up to determine if I need abbreviate this blissful moment, I saw the enraged animal disappearing in the side-door of the barn; and it was a nice, comfortable Durham cow, that somewhat rare but possible thing—a sportive cow.
‘Is he gone?’ breathed Kitty from my waistcoat.
‘Yes, he is gone—she is gone, darling. But don’t move; it may come again.’
[p88]
My first too hasty assurance had calmed Kitty’s fears, and she raised her charming flushed face from its retreat and prepared to withdraw. I did not facilitate the preparations, and a moment of awkward silence ensued.
‘Might I inquire,’ I asked, ‘if the dear little person at present reposing in my arms will stay there (with intervals for rest and refreshment) for the rest of her natural life?’