"Joke!" he reiterated. "Well, I should say not! Would you call it a joke to have two masked men jump in front of a running car, and flash something shiny? Then to have them climb in, cover my eyes and tell me I would be all right, and not to worry!"
"Oh," sighed Hazel, "I felt something would happen to you, Paul, dear.
You must give up this position."
"Well, we will see about that," he replied. "Perhaps I won't have anything to say about it—if the mailpouch is gone."
"Then they brought you out here?" asked Cecilia, determined to hear all the story.
"Carried me like a baby," replied Paul, "and in sheer humane consideration they put me near the road, so that my call might be heard."
"And the umbrella?" asked Cora.
"Oh, they went to a barn for that. It was raining, and my polite friends did not want me to take cold."
His tone was bitterly cutting; taking cold would evidently have been of small account to him.
"And they sat you upon that log?" put in Maud.
"Like any ordinary bump," he rejoined. "I never knew the misery of a bump on a log before."