“I say, are you hurt?” Bernard hailed him.
“I don’t think so. I believe I still possess a head.”
The voice was soft and low and lazy, with a touch of quaint humor. He looked up at Bernard without offering to rise. In the twilight Bernard could see only that he was tall and slight and young, and dressed in gray.
“It was an awfully plucky thing to do. If you’d come on I must have been killed,” said Bernard, simply.
“Well, so must I, you know.”
“No, you’d have been pitched out, and might have got off scot-free. It was about the pluckiest thing I’ve seen.”
“The whole thing was my fault.”
“It was the horse’s fault, not yours at all.”
“It was mine,” said the stranger, with swift decision. “I was going too fast. I should have changed the speed to come down the hill, and I would not; I thought I should meet no one, and I chose to risk it. I shall have to give up motoring, I suppose.”
“What on earth should you do that for?”