Page:Across the Stream.djvu/278

268 and, long after her trunk had been put into the car, she watched the door for Archie's exit. First one and then the other of the women were brought out to be taken to the police-station, and at last he emerged.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Jessie," he said. "But my mother wanted some magazine from the bookstall. Now, if you aren't nervous, we'll make up for lost time."

The road lay straight and empty before them, opening out like torn linen as they raced along it. Some way ahead there were a couple of cottages by the road-side, and, as they came near them, there wandered out into the road an old and lame collie. Instantly Archie's face changed into a mask of impatient malignancy.

"Archie, take care," said Jessie, "there's a dog on the road."

"Well, that's the dog's look-out," said he. "What right has a mangy brute like that to stop us?"

He made no attempt whatever to slow down, but just at the last moment he caused the car to swerve violently, and they missed the dog by a hair's-breadth. And he turned on her a face from which all impatience and anger had vanished, and from it looked out Archie's soul in agonized struggle.

"I couldn't, I couldn't!" he said. "I didn't touch it, Jessie: it's all right."

"I thought you must run over it," said she. "Why didn't you slow down, Archie?"

That glimpse of the agonized soul utterly vanished again.

"People have got no business to keep a decrepit old beast like that," he said. "I expect the kindest thing I could do would be to turn round and put it out of its misery. Never mind, I'll do it some other day."

Jessie clung to her glimpse of the other Archie.

"No, you won't," she said. "You'll risk your life and mine, too, not to hurt it."

He laughed.