We crawled along through the bushes in the wildest haste our poor disjointed and almost dismembered bodies would carry us; like a pair of mud-turtles who had seen better days did we take to all-fours.
Fortunately, my place was not far away, and we had just strength enough to crawl up on the porch and fall against the door heavily.
"Breakfast," I gasped, as Ethel's lovely face appeared suddenly at my side like a benignant angel's.
"What—what can I get you?" murmured the dear girl, in an agony of mind, hurrying here and there, her eyes suffused with tears.
"Bloodhounds!" murmured Vandeleur, relapsing into idiocy.
SCARE THE THIRD.
If you have ever had the fortune to be married to a Vassar graduate of the gushing and kittenish order, between nineteen and twenty, you will understand how difficult it was to explain my dilapidated appearance that memorable morning.
The ingenuity of my fabrications would have stocked a popular romance writer with all the modern conveniences; and I am sure the recording angel must have had difficulty in keeping pace with my transgressions unless he or she understood short-hand.
Vandeleur took an early opportunity to escape to the city, knowing very well that he would be held accountable for my degraded and dilapidated condition. The friends of a married man always are held responsible by his wife for any of his moral lapses, no matter when or where they may occur.
If I had only succeeded in my undertaking I might have viewed even my wounds—of which there were many—with some equanimity. But to have suffered in vain was enough to try the strongest soul; and I am afraid I was unnecessarily brusque to Ethel when she insisted on soaking me hourly in the most horrible liniments of her mother's decoction. I was pickled for about a week by her fair hands, and had become so impregnated with camphor and aromatic compounds that I exhaled spices like an Eastern mummy or a shopworn sachet-bag, and longed to get away from myself and the drugstore smell that clung to me closer than I ever want my brother to cling. I consented to the embalming process, because I wanted to look respectable when Ethel's mother, Mrs. McGoozle, put in an appearance. I knew I could not so easily satisfy her mind regarding that night of folly without the sworn affidavits of half-a-dozen reputable citizens. She said I wrote so much fiction that it had become a habit with me never to tell the truth.