“You don’t really mean it?” exclaimed Milly, giving way a little in spite of herself. “With a bicycle?”
It was the mother’s turn to laugh now.
“No, you foolish thing; even I have capacity to understand that it would be impossible to use those hideous—frightful instruments, on the bad hill-roads of this island. No; but it seems to be the nature of this dis-disagreeable—I had almost said detestable—youth, to move only under violent impulse, for he came round a corner of the Eagle Cliff at such a pace that, as I have said, he all but ran into my arms and knocked me down.”
“Dreadful!” exclaimed Milly, turning her back still more to the light and working mysteriously with her kerchief.
“Yes, dreadful indeed! And when I naturally taxed him with his cowardice and meanness, he did not seem at all penitent, but went on like a lunatic; and although what he said was civil enough, his way of saying it was very impolite and strange; and after we had parted, I heard him give way to fiendish laughter. I could not be mistaken, for the cliffs echoed it in all directions like a hundred hyenas!”
As this savoured somewhat of a joke, Milly availed herself of it, set free the safety-valve, and, so to speak, saved the boiler!
“Why do you laugh so much, child?” asked the old lady, when her daughter had transgressed reasonable limits.
“Well, you know, mother, if you will compare a man’s laugh to a hundred hyenas—”
“I didn’t compare the man’s voice,” interrupted Mrs Moss; “I said that the cliffs—”
“That’s worse and worse! Now, mother, don’t get into one of your hypercritical moods, and insist on reasons for everything; but tell me about this wicked—this dreadful young man. What was he like?”