herself upon Bell's knee. And while she hesitated he caught up the
lines with a gay flourish.

"Now, we'll all likely be killed," he cried. "But what's the
difference so long as we die happy!" And he gave Dolly a terrible lash
with the whip and shouted, "Get along there, you."

Now in all Dolly's quiet well-ordered life she had never felt anything
but the gentlest encouragement from a whip, neither had anything in her
memory ever pulled on her mouth in this dreadful manner. There was
both terror and indignation in the leap she gave into the air, and the
ignorant driver, taken quite unaware, pulled on one line so that the
buggy was almost overturned. Then away they went at a gallop up the
street, first on the edge of one ditch, then on the edge of the other,
while the two plotters left on the veranda, ready to fall over with
laughter, suddenly became sober as they saw a chance of their joke
ending in a catastrophe.

There was no feigning in Bell's terror now. She had turned pale, and
was crying out, "Oh, Christine, take the lines, take the lines!"

But Christina needed no bidding. Already she had caught the reins in
her strong brown hands, shoving the young man's aside sharply.

"You, you idiot!" was what she said, though she did not know it until
afterwards. She was too angry to say more, too genuinely alarmed.
With the firm familiar hand on the lines, and Christina's voice calling
soothingly, Dolly's panic began to subside. She came down to a canter,
then to a trot.

"Well!" cried the young man in real amazement. "She is some horse.
How do you ever manage to drive her?"

Christina was too angry to answer yet. She could never bear to see any
dumb animal hurt, and to have Dolly, her pet, struck--she could feel
the lash of the whip across her own back and was tingling with
indignation. And she was more deeply angry for another reason. She
had divined by Wallace's free manner that he understood just as well as
any of the girls that this had all been a ruse to capture him and carry
him off, and she felt enraged that she had to lend herself to such a
humiliation. She would show him that she was no party to the scheme by
getting rid of him then and there.

When she managed to get Dolly down to a walk she stopped her altogether
just at the foot of the hill, and turned upon the young man with
blazing eyes.

"Why did you not tell me you didn't know the first thing about driving
a horse?" she demanded.