“Come, sir! bestir yourself! Help this rascal to set up the coach,” said the hobgoblin to me; then, with a terrific screech to three countrymen at a distance, “Here, you fellows! Ain `t you ashamed to stand off when a poor woman is in distress?”
The countrymen, instead of fleeing for their lives, came running at full speed, and laid hold of the topsy-turvy coach. I also, though a small sized man, went to work like a son of Anak. The coachman, too, with the blood still streaming from his nose, tugged and toiled most manfully, dreading, doubtless, that the next blow might break his head. And yet, be mauled as the poor fellow had been, he seemed to glance at me with an eye of pity, as if my case were more deplorable than his. But I cherished a hope that all would turn out a dream, and seized the opportunity, as we raised the coach, to jam two” of my fingers under the wheel, trusting that the pain would awaken me.
“Why, here we are all to rights again!” exclaimed a sweet voice, behind. “Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen.—My dear Mr. Bullfrog, how you perspire! Do let me wipe your face.—Don `t take this little accident too much to heart, good driver. We ought to be thankful that none of our necks are broken!”
“We might have spared one neck out of the three,” muttered the driver, rubbing his ear and pulling his nose, to ascertain whether he had been cuffed or not. “Why, the woman `s a witch!”
Riding habit
I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is positively a fact, that there stood Mrs. Bullfrog with her glossy ringlets, curling on her brow and two rows of Orient pearls gleaming between her parted lips, which wore k most angelic smile. She had regained her riding-habit and calash from the grisly phantom, and was in all respects the lovely woman who had been sitting by my side at the instant of our overturn. How she had happened to disappear, and who had supplied her place, and whence she did now return, were problems too knotty for me to solve.
There stood my wife: that was the one thing certain ^mong a heap of mysteries. Nothing remained but to help her into the coach and plod on through the journey of the day and the journey of life as comfortably as we could. As the driver closed the door upon us I heard him whisper to the three countrymen.
“How do you suppose a fellow feels shut up in the cage with a she- tiger?”
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