embarrassing.

One afternoon, Jack Bracy drove up to the veranda of the Crustacean
with a smart buggy and spirited thoroughbred for Miss Circe's especial
driving, and his own saddle-horse on which he was to accompany her.
Jack had dismounted, a groom held his saddle-horse until the young lady
should appear, and he himself stood at the head of the thoroughbred. As
Johnnyboy, leaning against the railing, was regarding the turnout
with ill-concealed disdain, Jack, in the pride of his triumph over his
rivals, good-humoredly offered to put him in the buggy, and allow him to
take the reins. Johnnyboy did not reply.

"Come along!" continued Jack, "it will do you a heap of good! It's
better than lazing there like a girl! Rouse up, old man!"

"Me don't like that geegee," said Johnnyboy calmly. "He's a silly fool."

"You're afraid," said Jack.

Johnnyboy lifted his proud lashes, and toddled to the steps. Jack
received him in his arms, swung him into the seat, and placed the slim
yellow reins in his baby hands.

"Now you feel like a man, and not like a girl!" said Jack. "Eh, what?
Oh, I beg your pardon."

For Miss Circe had appeared--had absolutely been obliged to wait a
whole half-minute unobserved--and now stood there a dazzling but pouting
apparition. In eagerly turning to receive her, Jack's foot slipped on
the step, and he fell. The thoroughbred started, gave a sickening plunge
forward, and was off! But so, too, was Jack, the next moment, on his own
horse, and before Miss Circe's screams had died away.

For two blocks on Ocean Avenue, passersby that afternoon saw a strange
vision. A galloping horse careering before a light buggy, in which a
small child, seated upright, was grasping the tightened reins. But so
erect and composed was the little face and figure--albeit as white
as its own frock--that for an instant they did not grasp its awful
significance. Those further along, however, read the whole awful story
in the drawn face and blazing eyes of Jack Bracy as he, at last, swung
into the Avenue. For Jack had the brains as well as the nerve of your
true hero, and, knowing the dangerous stimulus of a stern chase to
a frightened horse, had kept a side road until it branched into the
Avenue. So furious had been his pace, and so correct his calculation,
that he ranged alongside of the runaway even as it passed, grasped the
reins, and, in half a block, pulled up on even wheels.

"I never saw such pluck in a mite like t