"Put your arms round my neck, Miss Tremaine," cried he, peremptorily.
The poor girl, half crying with shame and cold, did so, and Du Meresq, grasping her firmly round the waist, endeavoured to drag her forth.
"It's even betting she pulls him in," cried Jack, in a most unfeeling ecstasy, for Miss Tremaine was no pocket Venus—rather answered the Irishman's description of "an armful of joy."
"Oh, dear!" said poor Lilla, trembling with cold, as she found herself on terra firma, "I never can go on; the snow has made me quite wet through."
"Of course you can't," said Bertie, decidedly; "you'd catch your death of cold. Delamere, you drive on with the other Miss Tremaine," for they had both been in his sleigh, "and I'll take Miss Lilla home in my cutter, where she can get dry clothes. You must all pass their house on your way back, when we can fall in again; so that's all settled. Oh, Meredith, I forgot you. Hitch on to some other sleigh, there's a good fellow. I am on ambulance duty; somebody tell Colonel Rolleston—presently."
Then Bertie, who had his own reasons for hurrying, placed Miss Tremaine, still shivering from her snow bath, in the cutter, and drove rapidly off.
"Well, I am d——d," muttered Captain Delamere to Vavasour; "she has never seen the fellow before!"
"Hush, pray," said Jack, affectedly; "he is an officious young man. But be thankful for small mercies, old boy; you have got one left."
"That's the wrong one," growled Delamere.
After a brief consultation about the route, a unanimous vote for luncheon was passed, so they drove on till they came to an open space, the contrary side of the wood in which Du Meresq and Bluebell had walked on Sunday. Here all the sleighs formed up together, and Major Fane's larder was ransacked.