“Do as I bid you, sir!” said Di, drawing herself up like an empress.
Still the street boy held the pony’s head, and it is probable that he would have come off the victor in this controversy, had not Diana’s dignified action given to the reins which she held a jerk. The brown pony, deeming this full permission to go on, went off with a bound that overturned the boy, and caused the fore-wheel to strike him on the leg as it passed.
Springing up with the intention of giving chase to the runaway, the little fellow again fell, with a sharp cry of pain, for his leg was broken.
At the same moment Sir Richard Brandon issued from the door of his mansion leisurely, and with an air of calm serenity, pulling on his gloves. It was one of the knight’s maxims that, under all circumstances, a gentleman should maintain an appearance of imperturbable serenity. When, however, he suddenly beheld the street boy falling, and his daughter standing up in her wickerwork chariot, holding on to the brown pony like an Amazon warrior of ancient times, his maxim somehow evaporated. His serenity vanished. So did his hat as he bounded from beneath it, and left it far behind in his mad and hopeless career after the runaway.
A policeman, coming up just as Sir Richard disappeared, went to the assistance of the street boy.
“Not much hurt, youngster,” he said kindly, as he observed that the boy was very pale, and seemed to be struggling hard to repress his feelings.
“Vell, p’raps I is an’ p’raps I ain’t, Bobby,” replied the boy with an unsuccessful attempt at a smile, for he felt safe to chaff or insult his foe in the circumstances, “but vether hurt or not it vont much matter to you, vill it?”
He fainted as he spoke, and the look of half-humorous impudence, as well as that of pain, gave place to an expression of infantine repose.
The policeman was so struck by the unusual sight of a street boy looking innocent and unconscious, that he stooped and raised him quite tenderly in his arms.
“You’d better carry him in here,” said Sir Richard Brandon’s butler, who had come out. “I saw it ’appen, and suspect he must be a good deal damaged.”