‘It’s the most extraordinary thing,’ cried the slimmer of the two gentlemen, ‘but that’s the cart.’
‘And I know I saw a piano,’ said the girl.
‘O, it’s the cart, certainly; and the extraordinary thing is, it’s not the man,’ added the first.
‘It must be the man, Gid, it must be,’ said the portly one.
‘Well, then, why is he running away?’ asked Gideon.
‘His horse bolted, I suppose,’ said the Squirradical.
‘Nonsense! I heard the whip going like a flail,’ said Gideon. ‘It simply defies the human reason.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ broke in the girl, ‘he came round that corner. Suppose we went and—what do you call it in books?—followed his trail? There may be a house there, or somebody who saw him, or something.’
‘Well, suppose we did, for the fun of the thing,’ said Gideon.
The fun of the thing (it would appear) consisted in the extremely close juxtaposition of himself and Miss Hazeltine. To Uncle Ned, who was excluded from these simple pleasures, the excursion appeared hopeless from the first; and when a fresh perspective of darkness opened up, dimly contained between park palings on the one side and a hedge and ditch upon the other, the whole without the smallest signal of human habitation, the Squirradical drew up.