Now I do think automobiles are driven too fast in many cases, but I have seen Louis get wild with excitement, and say that he thinks he will lose his mind over those persons who won’t use the crossings, and who get right in front of his machine in the middle of blocks.
Poor mistress, she didn’t know anything about the trials of chauffeurs, and, in a flash, right there before my eyes as I hesitated in the background, for something told me what was coming—I saw her and my dear master struck by a little coupé, rolled over and over in the dust, and finally lying quite still.
I shrieked in agony, and a silly doglet who was gazing from a window told me afterward that she nearly died laughing to see me standing with one paw uplifted as if I could help them.
The people in the coupé were nearly crazy. They jumped out, lifted my master who was merely dazed, then took up my poor mistress who was bleeding from wounds on her pretty face, hurried her into a powerful limousine that had stopped at sight of the accident, and rushed her to a hospital.
I dashed after it, and kept it in sight till we got near the hospital, where I sank on the ground, more dead than alive.
After a long, long time my master came out. A doctor took him in his car, I got in beside them, and we drove sadly home.
That was the beginning of a terribly unhappy time for my master, and a mildly unhappy one for me. The apartment was lonely without its mistress. She had been selfish and disagreeable the most of the time when she was there, but we missed her.
My master would sit and look at her empty chair, his books and papers unheeded, then he would go to the telephone.
She got over her wounds and bruises, but she didn’t want to see my master. The doctors said her mind seemed slightly affected—she had better go away off in the country for treatment.
When this happened, there was a long silence from her, broken only occasionally by a report from a physician. Weeks and weeks went by. Miss Stanna got married, and went to live in the big stone house, but master never went near her, and his only recreation was his long walks at night.