ow
my father hates the whole nation! Oh dear, dear! And yet I know William.
I know why he went, and I do believe, in spite of a little finery and
foolishness, and of all the britschkas, and droschkies, and Victors,
into the bargain, that he'll be glad to get home again. No place like
home! Even in these silly notes that feeling is always at the bottom.
Did not I hear a carriage before me? Yes!--no!--I can't tell. One
takes every thing for the sound of wheels when one is expecting a dear
friend!--And if we can but get him to look, as he used to look, and to
be what he used to be, he won't leave us again for all the fine shops in
Regent Street, or all the britschkas and droschkies in Christendom. My
father is getting old now, and William ought to stay at home," thought
the affectionate sister; "and I firmly believe that what he ought to do,
he will do. Besides which--surely there _is_ a carriage now." Just as
Susan arrived at this point of her cogitations, that sound which had
haunted her imagination all the afternoon, the sound of wheels rapidly
advancing, became more and more audible, and was suddenly succeeded by
a tremendous crash, mixed with men's voices--one of them her
brother's--venting in two languages (for Monsieur Victor, whatever might
be his proficiency in English, had recourse in this emergency to his
native tongue) the different ejaculations of anger and astonishment
which are pretty sure to accompany an overset: and on turning a corner
of the lane, Susan caught her first sight of the britschka or droschky,
whichever it might be, that had so much puzzled her simple apprehension,
in the shape of a heavy-looking open carriage garnished with head and
apron, lying prostrate against a gate-post, of which the wheels had
fallen foul. Her brother was fully occupied in disengaging the horses
from the traces, in reprimanding his companion for his bad driving,
which he declared had occasioned the accident, and in directing him to
go for assistance to a cottage half a mile back on the road to Wantage,
whilst he himself intimated his intention of proceeding for more help
to the Farm; and the obedient Frenchman--who, notwithstanding the
derangement which his coeffure might naturally be expected to have
experienced in his tumble, looked, Susan thought, as if his hair were
put in paper every night and pomatumed every morning, and as if his
whole dapper person were saturated with his own finest essences, a sort
of travelling