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 laugh at seeing a chap take a spill like that. Eudora was leaning out of the wagon, a hand on the dashboard, alarm in every feature, ready to jump down.

"Are you hurt, Tom?" she inquired anxiously.

"Are you hurt, Tom?" her mother chimed after her, tiptoeing to see him over the high wagon-bed.

"I ought to be," Tom replied in scorn of his bungling. "It's not due to any special amount of brains that I'm not. No, thank you, not a bit."

The women were hearty in their gratitude for his escape from a situation that had presented more perils to the onlookers than the participant, and the man on horseback, of whom Tom had been conscious in a confused way since hitting the ground, looked down with an expression of sympathy. He twisted his head in solemn appreciation of the lucky escape.

"If your hub 'd 'a' been three inches shorter you'd 'a' missed it clean," the stranger said.

This was such a generous, humane, altogether ridiculous way of excusing his wild driving that Simpson felt at once a friendliness for the stranger. He nodded ruefully, pretty much ashamed of himself.

"Are you sure you're not hurt?" Eudora pressed the question. To make sure his denial was not a deceit, she hopped down and felt him over, head and shoulders, that being the way he had struck.

"I ought to be if I can't do any better than that," he said.

Mrs. Ellison talked over the fence, saying she suspicioned that horse on account of the way he squatted when Tom threw the harness on him, and cautioning