Miss Gastonguay was escorting her guests to the terminus of the car line, and at a sudden exclamation from Derrice she turned her eyes toward the enormously fat man being propelled like a rubber ball down the gravelled road.
A slim figure leaped about it. Sometimes the figure was beside the ball, sometimes beyond it,—running at it, trundling it in the gutter, helping it out again, guiding it in the middle of the road, incommoding it in every possible way, yet keeping it moving.
A hat and a cane were accompanying articles, and went spinning through the air like jugglers' toys.
"Has that quirky captain gone crazy?" exclaimed Miss Gastonguay.
No one spoke but Mrs. White. "If that man is getting kicked," she observed, with deliberation, "and Micah's doing it, he deserves a kicking."
Her sentiments were clear, though the construction of her sentence was slightly equivocal, and without contradiction her hearers continued to watch the ball play until the ball arrived at its destination, and was caught up and whirled away by a car into which it was politely assisted by its attendant demon.
Then they remained spectators of a joyful hornpipe danced by the superintendent of the sardine factories, who joyously communed with himself, "First round with H. R. I lead and force him from ring,—what'll be the end of the bout?"
CHAPTER XXIX.
NEWS OF THE WANDERER.