Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/63

 They were on a country road so deeply ditched that they could not turn out of it into a fence. They were approaching a bridge, and it was improbable that they would be able to cross it safely. "Well, young lady," her father said, through his teeth, "I think we're done." She clung to her seat in silence. He saw a shallower part of the ditch ahead, where there was an open gate into the fields. Fortunately it was on the opposite side from the broken shaft. He took a single rein in both hands and pulled on it savagely. The horse leaped aside, the carriage swooped into the ditch, a front wheel dished and broke at the hub, and they overturned.

They were saved from being kicked to a pulp because the tugs broke and freed the horse. When they picked themselves up from the mud, the girl, her face blazing with excitement, cried: "Daddy! Let's do it again!"

And the point is that she knew what she was saying and said it partly because she really had enjoyed the excitement, partly to reassure his anxiety about her, but largely for what you might call the dramatic effect. This she has admitted. She has admitted that by some duality of mind, even at the age of eight, and in such a moment, she was capable of a theatricality.

It is the more puzzling because she was evidently a frank and natural child. She was not precocious nor self-conscious. Nor was she ever paraded in any public way by her parents. They were not