It seemed as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up, until a feeble squeak made the rescuers lift their eyes suddenly to the heart of the tree, where a black skirt and two small kicking feet were seen swinging to and fro in the air. Another step forward showed the whole picture, gauntleted hands clutching wildly to a bough, and a pink agonised face turned over one shoulder, while a little pipe of a voice called out gaspingly—
“Catch me! hold me! take me down! oh, my arms! I’m falling, falling, I’m falling! oh, oh, oh—I’m falling down!” And fall she did, so suddenly and violently that the groom, although a stoutly built man, tottered beneath her weight.
The ordinary heroine of fiction is so frail and ethereal in build that when she faints away, under a stress of emotion, the hero gathers her lovely form in his arms and carries her for a couple of miles with delightful ease; but Mollie Farrell was a healthy, well-grown girl; and for one agonising moment it appeared as if the sequel to the adventure was to be an ignominious tumble to the ground of rescuer and rescued.
The moment passed, the groom steadied himself with an involuntary “Whoa!” and Mollie turned to confront her friends, swaying painfully to and fro, with crossed hands pressing against each shoulder.
“Oh, my arms! my arms! They are torn out of their sockets! I know they are! The pain is really hideous!”
“What happened? How did you manage to perform such an acrobatic feat?” cried Jack, now that anxiety was appeased, unable to resist a smile at the remembrance of the pretty, comical picture, and the undignified descent to the ground; but Mollie snapped him up sharply, her sense of humour absolutely eclipsed by the pain she was suffering.
“It wasn’t a feat! I saw the bough before me and I thought I should be killed, and I put out my hands to save myself and—I don’t know how it happened; but the next moment that horrid, wicked animal slipped from under me, and my arms were jerked nearly out of my body, and I was left dangling in mid-air. It’s perfectly hateful of you all to stand there and laugh! I might have been killed outright if it hadn’t been for Bates.”
“You were only a yard or so from the ground; you could have dropped down yourself without making a fuss. I kept my seat at any rate, and I didn’t howl half so loudly!” said Ruth self-righteously. “What made you do anything so mad as to ride in among all those trees?”
“I didn’t! It was the horse; he would go, whatever I did,” protested Mollie feebly: whereupon Bates shook his head with solemn disapproval.
“We’ve got to be very thankful as matters is no worse,” said the alarmed groom. “I shall have a fine lecturing from the squire when he hears of this, but you will bear me witness as it was against my wishes. If I’d had my way you would never have ventured off by yourselves, for another week at least, but there was no gainsaying you. I’m thinking you’ll have had about enough lesson for to-day, and I must look after those horses. To-morrow—”