“About ten yards.  I said to myself, ’If that chap doesn’t look out he’ll be all over me in two seconds.’  I turned as sharp as I could away to the left.  I could have turned sharper if I’d had your bicycle in my right hand instead of my left.  But it wouldn’t have made any difference.  The first horse simply made straight for me.  There was about a mile of space for him between me and the tram, but he wouldn’t look at it.  He wanted me, and he had me.  They both had me.  I never felt the actual shock.  Curious, that!  I’m told one horse put his foot clean through the back wheel of my bike.  Then he was stopped by the front palings of the Conservative Club.  Oh! a pretty smash!  The other horse and the boy thereon finished half-way up Moorthorne Road.  He could stick on, no mistake, that kid could.  Midland Railway horses.  Whoppers.  Either being taken to the vets’ or brought from the vet’s—­I don’t know.  I forget.”

Rachel put her hand on his arm.

“Do come into the parlour and have the easy-chair.”

“I’ll come—­I’ll come,” he said, with the same annoyance.  “Give us a chance.”  His voice was now a little less noisy.

“But you might have been killed!”

“You bet I might!  Eight hoofs all over me!  One tap from any of the eight would have settled yours sincerely.”

“Louis!” She spoke firmly.  “You must come into the parlour.  Now come along, do, and sit down and let me look at your face.”  She removed his hat, which was perched rather insecurely on the top of the bandages.  “Who was it looked after you?”

“Well,” he hesitated, following her into the parlour, “it seems to have been chiefly Mrs. Heath.”

“But didn’t they take you to a chemist’s?  Isn’t there a chemist’s handy?”

“The great Greene had one of his bilious attacks and was in bed, it appears.  And the great Greene’s assistant is only just out of petticoats, I believe.  However, everybody acted for the best, and here I am.  And if you ask me, I think I’ve come out of it rather well.”

He dropped heavily on to the Chesterfield.  What she could see of his cheeks was very pale.

“Open the window,” he murmured.  “It’s frightfully stuffy here.”

“The window is open,” she said.  In fact, a noticeable draught blew through the room.  “I’ll open it a bit more.”

Before doing so she lifted his feet on to the Chesterfield.

“That’s better.  That’s better,” he breathed.

When, a moment later, she returned to him with a glass of water which she had brought from the kitchen, spilling drops of it along the whole length of the passage, he smiled at her and then winked.

It was the wink that seemed pathetic to her.  She had maintained her laudable calm until he winked, and then her throat tightened.

“He may have some dreadful internal injury,” she thought.  “You never know.  I may be a widow soon.  And every one will say, ’How young she is to be a widow!’ It will make me blush.  But such things can’t happen to me.  No, he’s all right.  He came up here alone.  They’d never have let him come up here alone if he hadn’t been all right.  Besides, he can walk.  How silly I am!”