“Oo, ay, sir, she’s come. But she iss a queer leddy. She’s been chumpin’ in an’ oot o’ the waginette a’ the way up, like a whutret, to admire the scenery, as she says. When we cam’ to the heed o’ the pass she chumped oot again, an’ telt me to drive on slow, an wait at the futt o’ the first hull for her. She’s no far ahint.”
“I’ll go and meet her. You can drive on, slowly.”
Barret hurried forward with feelings of considerable uncertainty as to whether this chance of meeting his mother-in-law to be (he hoped!) alone, and in these peculiar circumstances, would be an advantage or otherwise. She might be annoyed by a sudden interruption in “admiring the scenery.” There would be the awkwardness of having to introduce himself, and she might be fatigued after all her “chumpin’” in and out of the waggonette.
He was still pondering these points while he walked smartly forward, turned the projecting cliff above referred to, and all but overturned the identical little old lady whom he had run down on his bicycle, weeks before, in London!
To say that these two drew back and gazed at each other intently—the lady quivering and pale, the youth aghast and red—is to give but a feeble account of the situation.
“Young man,” she said, indignantly, in a low, repressed voice, “you have a peculiar talent for assaulting ladies.”
“Madam,” explained the youth, growing desperate, “you are right. I certainly have a talent—at least a misfortune—of that sort—”
He stopped short, for, being quite overwhelmed, he knew not what to say.
“It is sad,” continued the little old lady in a tone of contempt, “that a youth like you should so much belie your looks. It was so mean of you to run away without a word of apology, just like a bad little boy, for fear of being scolded—not that I cared much for being run down with that horrid bicycle, for I was not hurt—though I might have been killed—but it was the cowardly way in which you left me lying helpless among bakers, and sweeps, and policemen, and dirty boys. Oh! it was disgraceful.”
Poor Barret became more and more overwhelmed as she went on.