Page:E Nesbit - Man and Maid (1906).djvu/154

 And, looking from his window, he saw the cloud of white dust rise high above the edge of the old quarry, and seem to drift off to join the cotton-wool clouds in the blue sky.

“I suppose it’s all safe enough here,” he said, and went back to his manuscripts. But he could not work. At last something had happened; he found himself shaken and excited. He laid down the pen. “I wonder if any one was hurt?” he said; “the road runs just below, of course. I wonder whether there’ll be any more of it—I wonder?” A wire jerked, the cracked bell sounded harshly through the silence of the house. He sprang to his feet. “Who on earth” he said. “The house isn’t safe after all, perhaps, and they’ve come to tell me.”

As he went along the worn oil-cloth of the hall he saw through the comfortless white-spotted glass of his front door the outline of a woman’s hat.

He opened the door—it stuck as usual—but he got it open. There stood a girl holding a bicycle.

“Oh!” she said, without looking at him, “I’m so sorry to trouble you—my bicycle’s run down—and I’m afraid it’s a puncture, and could you let me have some water, to