VI
There were, of course, occasional misadventures. There was that terrible day, for instance, when Tish hung from a bridge by her hands, ready to drop to a train beneath, when through some mistake the train was switched to another track and our dear Letitia was left hanging, like Mohammed’s coffin, between heaven and earth. And that other day, of wretched memory, when on exploding the hillside to imprison the governor, a large stone flew up and struck Aggie violently in the mouth, dislodging her upper plate and almost strangling her.
There was, again, the time when the smugglers set fire to the building Tish was in, and the fire department did not receive its signal and failed to arrive until almost too late.
But in the main, things went very well. There were peaceful days when Aggie and I fed peanuts to the little studio elephant, Katie, and indeed became quite friendly with Katie, who dragged certain heavy articles about the lot and often roamed at will, her harness chains dangling. And there were hot days when we sought the shelter of the cool hangar which housed the smugglers’ dirigible, or baby blimp as it was called, and where we had concealed several bottles of blackberry cordial against emergency.
At such times we frequently discussed what Aggie now termed the Macmanus mystery. For such it had become.
“He’s not hanging around for any good purpose, Lizzie,” Aggie frequently observed. “He’s in Tish’s picture somehow, and—I think he is a lover!”
We had not mentioned him to Tish, but on the next day after she took her parachute leap we learned that she had her own suspicions about him.
I may say here, before continuing with my narrative, that Tish’s parachute experience was without accident, although not without incident. She was to leap with the bag of stage money she had captured in the air from the smugglers, and this she did. But a gust of wind caught her, and it was our painful experience to see her lifted on the gale and blown out of sight toward the mountains.
Several automobiles and the dirigible immediately started after her, but dusk fell and she had not returned to us. Even now I cannot picture those waiting hours without emotion. At one moment we visualized her sitting on some lonely mountain crag, and at another still floating on, perhaps indefinitely, a lonely bit of flotsam at the mercy of the elements.
At nine o’clock that night, however, she returned, slightly irritable but unhurt.