Our heroes, worn out already, could not, try all they would, keep it slack. Every step it became tauter and tauter, until at last you might have played a tune upon it. They made one gallant effort to relieve the strain, but, alas! it was no good. There was a crack of the whip ahead, the horses, full of their coming supper, gave a bound forward, and that moment on the lonely road, five miles from home, sprawled Heathcote, with Dick in his lap, and two knotted pocket-handkerchiefs in the dust at their feet. They had no breath left to shout, no energy to overtake, so they sat there panting, watching the coach vanish into the night and humbly wondering—what next?
“Here’s a soak!” said Heathcote at last, recovering speech and slowly untying his handkerchief from the cable in order to mop his face.
“Yes,” said Dick, getting off his friend’s lap and looking dismally down the road; “our ride home didn’t come off after all.”
“We came off, though!” said Heathcote. But he corrected himself as he saw Dick wearily round upon him. “I mean—I say, what must we do?”
“Stump it,” said Dick. “It’s about five miles.”
Heathcote whistled.
“Pity we didn’t cheek it into our own coach,” said he. “I say, Dick, what a row there’ll be!”
“Of course there will,” said Dick. “Have you only just found that out? Come along; we’ll be late.”
Considering it was eight o’clock and they were yet five miles from home, this last observation was sagacious.
They strolled on for half an hour in silence, mending their pace as they recovered their wind, until at the end of that time they had settled down into a steady three-and-a-half miles an hour, and felt rather more like getting home than they had done.