"Sit still," I exclaimed to my aunt as I indulged them with a good strong "give-and-take" pull.
The gravel-pit corner was close at hand, but the figure had seized the refractory little steeds by their heads, and though I shook all over, and felt really frightened now the danger was past, I knew that we were safe, and that we owed our safety to a tall, ragged cripple with a crutch and a bandage over one eye.
My aunt jumped out in a twinkling, and the instant she touched _terra firma_ put her hand to her side, and began to sob and gasp and pant, as ladies will previous to an attack of what the doctors call "hysteria." She leant upon the cripple's shoulder, and I observed a strange, roguish sparkle in his unbandaged eye. Moreover, I remarked that his hands were white and clean, and his figure, if he hadn't been such a cripple, would have been tall and active.
"What shall I do?" gasped my aunt. "I won't get in; nothing shall induce me to get in again. Kate, give this good man half a crown. What a providential escape! He ought to have a sovereign. Perhaps ten shillings will be enough. How am I to get back? I'll walk all the way rather than get in."
"But, aunt," I suggested, "at any rate I must get to the station. Aunt Deborah is sure to think something has happened, and she ought not to be frightened till she gets stronger. How far is it to the station? I think I should not mind driving the ponies on."
In the meantime the fat farmer whom we had passed so rapidly had arrived at the scene of action, his anxiety not having induced him in the slightest degree to increase the jog-trot pace at which all his ideas seemed to travel. He knew Lady Horsingham quite well, and now sat in his gig with his hat off, wiping his fat face, and expatiating on the narrow escape her ladyship had made, but without offering the slightest suggestion or assistance whatever.
At this juncture the cripple showed himself a man of energy.
"Your ladyship had best go home with this gentleman," said he, indicating the fat farmer, "if the young lady is not afraid to go on. I can take care of her as far as the railway, if it's not too great a liberty, and bring the ponies back to the Hall afterwards, my lady?" with an interrogative snatch at his ragged hat.