Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/203

 greatest pluck. She had whisked off her veil and faced the people boldly, her grey eyes meeting theirs, her face white, save for a bright pink spot on either cheek. At sight of her beauty the clamour died down, and in the lull she spoke to the man who had been thrown under the horse.

"I am very sorry you are hurt," she said, "and shall be pleased to give you something to buy yourself new clothes. Are you injured anywhere?"

At the sound of her correct but foreign-sounding French someone in the crowd shouted out, "A bas les Anglais!" The girl drew herself up proudly and looked in the direction of the voice. She didn't try to excuse herself by denying England and claiming a nationality more popular in France, and I loved her more than ever for this reticence.

"Pay!" shouted the man who had been hurt, with one hand wiping a trickle of blood out of his eye, with the other thumping the mud-guard of the car. "Of course you shall pay. God only knows what injuries I have received. Mazette! I am all one ache. Ah, you pay well, or you do not go on!" He pressed closer to the car, and his friends closed in around him.

"Pay them, Molly! pay anything they ask!"quavered Aunt Mary, "or they will kill us! Oh, I always knew something like this was bound to happen! What a fool I was to leave my peaceful home and come to a country of thieves and murderers!"

"Don't be frightened, Aunt Mary," said the girl, with more patience for her relative's garrulous