"A chair. I can't mount as I used to." Her black groom brought out a chair. In a moment she was on the back of the powerfully built stallion and clattering up Front Street with perilous indifference to an ill-paved road and any unwatchful foot-passenger. She struck up Spruce Street and the unpaved road then called Delaware Fifth Street and so down Arch. It was mid-morning, and the street full of vehicles and people a-foot. Suddenly, when near her own house, she checked her horse as she saw approaching a chaise with leather springs, the top thrown back, and in front a sorry-looking white horse. Within sat a man who would have served for the English stage presentation of a Frenchman—a spare figure, little, with very red cheeks under a powdered wig; he was dressed in the height of the most extravagant fashion of a day fond of color. The conventional gold-headed cane of the physician lay between his legs. At sight of Mistress Wynne he applied the whip and called out to his horse in a shrill voice, "Allez. Get on, Ça Ira!"
The spinster cried to him as they came near: "Stop, stop, Doctor! I want you. Stop—do you hear me?"
He had not forgotten a recent and somewhat fierce political passage of arms, and turned to go by her. With a quick movement she threw the big stallion in front of Ça Ira, who reared, stopped short, and cast the doctor sprawling over the dash-board. He sat up in wrath. "Sacré bleu!" he cried, "I might have been killed. Quelle femme! What a woman! And my wig—" It was in the street dust.
"Why did you not stop? Get the man's wig, Tom." The groom, grinning, dismounted and stood still, awaiting her orders, the dusty wig in his hand.
"With a quick movement she threw the big stallion in front of Ça Ira"
"My wig—give it to me."
"No, don't give it to him." The doctor looked ruefully from the black to the angry spinster.