ing, and hats and parasols.
The crowd burst into the Avenue again from both sides like a flood. The
space by the gate was filled in an instant. The frenzied animals stood
trembling, in a lather of foam, close to Alice's carriage. Mary saw a
grey-clad Englishman, an erect old man with a white beard and a tall
hat; she saw a young lady hanging on his arm, and she heard him say:
"Well done, young man!" A roar of laughter followed. And not till now
did she see him who had evoked it--still gripping the horse's nostrils,
hatless, waistcoat torn, hand bleeding, his perspiring, excited face at
this moment turned laughingly towards the Englishman. At exactly the
same time the man caught sight of Alice, who was still standing on the
seat of her carriage. He instantly deserted horses, carriage,
Englishman, and forced his way through the crowd towards her.

"Dear people, get me out of this!" he said quickly, in the broadest of
"Eastern" Norwegian. Before Alice had time to answer, or even to step
down from the seat, and long before the groom could swing himself down
from the box, he had opened the carriage door and was standing beside
them. He handed first Alice and then her friend down from the seat. Then
he said to the coachman in French:

"Drive me home as soon as you can move. You remember the address?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Capitaine," replied the coachman, touching his hat
respectfully, with a look of admiration.

As Frans Roey turned to sit down, his face contracted, and he exclaimed,
catching hold of his foot: "Oh!----the devil! that brute must have
trodden on me. I never felt it till now."

As he spoke, he met Mary's large, astonished eyes; he had not looked at
her before, not even when he was assisting her down from the seat. The
change in his expression was so sudden and so extremely comical that
both ladies burst out laughing. Frans raised his bleeding hand to his
hat--and discovered that he had no hat. Then he laughed too.

The coachman had in the meantime manoeuvred them a few yards forwards,
and they were beginning to turn.

"I don't suppose I need tell you who she is?" laughed Alice.

"No," answered Roey, looking so hard at Mary that she blushed.

"Good heavens! Think of your daring to do that!" It was Alice who spoke.

"Oh! It's not so dangerous as it looks," he replied, without taking his
eyes off Mary. "There's a trick in it. I've done it twice before." He
was speaking to Mary alone. "I saw at once that onl