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Irene had her hand on the rail, and at every lurch she gripped it tightly. Swithin heard her ask:

“Are we going to have an accident, Uncle Swithin?”

He gasped out between his pants: “It’s nothing; a—little fresh!”

“I’ve never been in an accident.”

“Don’t you move!” He took a look at her. She was smiling, perfectly calm. “Sit still,” he repeated. “Never fear, I’ll get you home!”

And in the midst of all his terrible efforts, he was surprised to hear her answer in a voice not like her own:

“I don’t care if I never get home!”

The carriage giving a terrific lurch, Swithin’s exclamation was jerked back into his throat. The horses, winded by the rise of a hill, now steadied to a trot, and finally stopped of their own accord.

“When”—Swithin described it at Timothy’s—“I pulled ’em up, there she was as cool as myself. God bless my soul! she behaved as if she didn’t care whether she broke her neck or not! What was it she said: ‘I don’t care if I never get home?’ Leaning over the handle of his cane, he wheezed out, to Mrs. Small’s terror: “And I’m not altogether surprised, with a finickin’ feller like young Soames for a husband!”