l you.
(Puff.) I just aimed at the end that I thought was the head. And let
fly. (Puff.) And over it went, you know."

"Dead?"

"AS dead. It was one of the luckiest shots I ever fired. And I wasn't
much over nine at the time, neither."

"_I_ should have screamed and run away."

"There's some things you can't run away from," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "To
run would have been Death."

"I don't think I ever met a lion-killer before," she remarked, evidently
with a heightened opinion of him.

There was a pause. She seemed meditating further questions. Mr.
Hoopdriver drew his watch hastily. "I say," said Mr. Hoopdriver, showing
it to her, "don't you think we ought to be getting on?"

His face was flushed, his ears bright red. She ascribed his confusion
to modesty. He rose with a lion added to the burthens of his conscience,
and held out his hand to assist her. They walked down into Cosham
again, resumed their machines, and went on at a leisurely pace along
the northern shore of the big harbour. But Mr. Hoopdriver was no longer
happy. This horrible, this fulsome lie, stuck in his memory. Why HAD he
done it? She did not ask for any more South African stories, happily--at
least until Porchester was reached--but talked instead of Living
One's Own Life, and how custom hung on people like chains. She talked
wonderfully, and set Hoopdriver's mind fermenting. By the Castle, Mr.
Hoopdriver caught several crabs in little shore pools. At Fareham they
stopped for a second tea, and left the place towards the hour of sunset,
under such invigorating circumstances as you shall in due course hear.

XXX. THE RESCUE EXPEDITION

And now to tell of those energetic chevaliers, Widgery, Dangle, and
Phipps, and of that distressed beauty, 'Thomas Plantagenet,' well known
in society, so the paragraphs said, as Mrs. Milton. We left them at
Midhurst station, if I remember rightly, waiting, in a state of fine
emotion, for the Chichester train. It was clearly understood by the
entire Rescue Party that Mrs. Milton was bearing up bravely against
almost overwhelming grief. The three gentlemen outdid one another in
sympathetic expedients; they watched her gravely almost tenderly. The
substantial Widgery tugged at his moustache, and looked his unspeakable
feelings at her with those dog-like, brown eyes of his; the slender
Dangle tugged at HIS moustache, and did what he could with unsympathetic
grey ones. Phipps, unhappily, had no moustache to run a