Their spirits rose at the prospect.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Hopkins. “Why, it’s nearly a month since we had a bazaar. And such a good cause. Rescuing the poor dumb suffering creature from the hands of the torturer.... How sad it looks and yet grateful as though it understood all that we were going to do for it.”
Maria rolled her eyes again and drooped her head still further.
“I’m going to take it straight home,” said the Vicar’s wife, “and give it a good meal and nurse it back to health and strength. I’ll go to the police station and tell them that I have taken it and why. I’ll just fix up something to lead it home by.”
She took down a picture and divested it of its picture cord, which she then tied round the neck of the still meekly unprotesting Maria. The others gazed at her in silent admiration. There was really no one like the Vicar’s wife in a crisis.
Then, with the air of a general who has now marshalled her forces, she led out Maria, followed by her faithful band. The Outlaws, weakly wondering what was going to happen, crept out of their hiding place and followed at a distance.
“They don’t know it’s him,” said Joan in a thrilled whisper.
Maria behaved quite well till they got to the hill. Then her familiar devil returned to her. She did not kick or bite. She ran. She ran at top speed up the steep hill, dragging the panting, gasping Vicar’s wife after her at the end of the cord. Maria’s neck seemed to be made of iron. The weight of the Vicar’s wife did not seem to trouble it at all. The picture cord, too, must have been pretty strong. The Vicar’s wife did not let go. With dogged British determination she clung to her end of the cord. She lost her footing, her hat came off, she gasped and panted and gurgled and choked and sputtered. She dropped her bag. But she did not let go her end of the picture cord. Behind her—far behind her—ran her little crowd of followers, clucking in dismayed horror. Mrs. Hopkins picked up the Vicar’s wife’s hat and Mrs. Gerald Fitzgerald her bag.
At the top of the hill Maria stopped abruptly and reassumed her air of weary patience. The Vicar’s wife sat down in the dust by her side, gasping but still undaunted, holding on to the end of the cord. The others arrived and the Vicar’s wife, still sitting in the road, put on her hat and wiped the dust out of her eyes.
“What happened?” panted Mrs. Hopkins. “Did it—bolt or something?”