“You will be angry with me if I tell you that I have had a fright!” he answers, smiling again, deprecatingly this time. “But that is about what it comes to. My father made them put the young horse into the cart, when I went to Shipstone this morning. And we met one of those steam-rollers; and he took fright and bolted.”
“And you could not hold him?”
“I was not driving. You know I never do, if I can help it. I do not see the use of keeping a dog and barking one’s self!”
“Well?”
“Oh, you need not be afraid that I did anything unworthy of a man and a gentleman!” noting with slightly ironical comment the apprehension in her face. “I sat tight, and Hodson pulled him up just in time to stop him taking the gates at the level crossing. But you know that nerves are not my strong point; and it gave them a bit of a jar!”
Her face has hardened and stiffened. “A man has no business to have nerves!”
“What is he to do if God has presented him with a large bundle of them at his birth?”
The question is unanswerable, and on this unsatisfactory note they part. It sounds out of tune-ly all through her short drive, and makes a discord of it. White as a table-cloth because a horse shied!
CHAPTER XII
“Féo has given strict orders that you are to be shown up to her first.”