“Crass idiot to ride at that pace,” ejaculated John against the hedge. The machine had been within a couple of inches of his arm.
And then came the first drops of rain, splashing down, splotching dark spots on the dusty road. White a moment agone, in a second it was brown. The rain hissed down upon the earth. Truly there was the sound of its abundance.
John took to his heels and ran. As he turned at the bottom of the hill, he came to a sudden halt. By the roadside, half sitting, half lying, was a man; a bicycle, wheels in the air, reposed disconsolately in a ditch.
“Hurt?” demanded John as he came abreast of him.
“Twisted my ankle,” was the laconic response.
John glanced along the road. A hundred yards or so ahead, through the downpour, he could see the White Cottage.
“I can give you an arm to shelter if you can manage to hobble,” he announced, indicating the house.
The man scrambled to his feet with a grimace of pain. Together, in halting fashion, they made their way towards the cottage. Conversation there was none. John expressed a consolatory remark or two at intervals, to which his companion replied, “All right. Not much. Brake broke,” as the case might be.
Even in these few words there was something in the inflexion of his voice which perplexed John. Undercurrently he found himself demanding what it was, but the exigencies of the moment disallowed of the query coming uppermost. Also, at the moment, John happened to be suffering from one of those lapses into obtuseness to which even the most intelligent of us are liable on occasions.
It was with a sigh of relief that he pushed open the door of his sitting-room.