The road had a sort of hump in it just before it forked off on to the cliff. That baffled them.
At last, as he himself was returning from the plateau, he came upon the sisters right in the middle of the rise, locked in deadly combat with the bath-chair. Pressed against it, shoulder to shoulder, they resisted its efforts to hurl itself violently backward down the hill. The General, as he clung to the arms of the chair, preserved his attitude of superb indifference to the event.
Gibson leaped to their assistance. With a threefold prodigious effort they topped the rise, and in silence, in a sort of solemn triumph, the bath-chair was wheeled on to the plateau.
He liked the simplicity with which they accepted his aid, and he liked the way they thanked him, both sisters becoming very grave all at once. It was the fair one who spoke. The dark one only bowed and smiled as he lifted his cap and turned away.
"It's all very well," he heard her saying, "but how are we going to get him down again?"
How were they?
He hung about the cliffside till the time came for them to return, when he presented himself as if by accident.
"You must allow me," he said, "to see you safe to the bottom of the hill."
"You see" (the General addressed his daughters as they paused halfway), "we've accomplished it, and no bones are broken."