Towards that quiet comfortable home he was conducting Miss Durrant when they encountered the crowd and the injured brougham. As they arrived at the door she said: "Won't you come in, Charlie?"
"I really can't," he answered. "I am already very late with my copy, and I must go home and attend to my duke. Otherwise I shall get into awful trouble with the proprietor of my duke. You cannot be hasty with your duke. You must treat him as if he was fat and scant of breath. You may have noticed that in my present duke I make him say 'hem,' 'hum,' very often. This is just to spread out the ducal speech. You can't expect to get as many articulate words out of a duke as out of an ordinary mortal, and the hem-hums are wonderfully efficacious."
Having taken leave of Marion, he turned his face east, and began walking back at a rapid rate towards his lodgings in Long Acre.
In the meantime the brougham, through which the pole of the omnibus had gone, had been driven along Piccadilly through Leicester Square to Long Acre. "Take the number of that omnibus," the occupant of the injured vehicle had said to the coachman as he stepped to the ground, "and then drive to Whiteshaw's in Long Acre, and tell him to repair that door."
The coachman had done as he was told, and by the time Cheyne got back to Long Acre the brougham had arrived, the horses had been unharnessed, and the coachman had got a man to lead the horses home.
When Cheyne arrived at the place he lived in he found Mr. Whiteshaw, with whom he was friendly, examining the injured brougham.
"That was an ugly smash," said the carriage-builder. "Nearly killed the Duke."
"What Duke?" asked Cheyne, with great interest.
"The Duke of Shropshire. See the arms on the other panel. He had a very narrow escape. The pole went slap through the door, and when the 'bus-driver threw his horses on their haunches the pole made a plunge up, and just barely missed the chin of the Duke."
"By Jove, I am very sorry for poor Regi."