So she sat in the sunshine, looking around her with eager, interested eyes.  The coachman, high up on his box, seemed as interested as herself; at least, he sat up very straight and stiff.  But it was only his back that Lloyd saw.  He had been at a fete the night before.  There seems to be always a holiday in Geneva.  He had stayed long at the merrymaking and had taken many mugs of beer.  They made him drowsy and stupid.  The American gentleman and his wife stayed long in the enameller’s shop.  He could scarcely keep his eyes open.  Presently, although he never moved a muscle of his back and sat up stiff and straight as a poker, he was sound asleep, and the reins in his grasp slipped lower and lower and lower.

The horse was an old one, stiffened and jaded by much hard travel, but it had been a mettlesome one in its younger days, with the recollection of many exciting adventures.  Now, although it seemed half asleep, dreaming, maybe, of the many jaunts it had taken with other American tourists, or wondering if it were not time for it to have its noonday nose-bag, it was really keeping one eye open, nervously watching some painters on the sidewalk.  They were putting up a scaffold against a building, in order that they might paint the cornice.

Presently the very thing happened that the old horse had been expecting.  A heavy board fell from the scaffold with a crash, knocking over a ladder, which fell into the street in front of the frightened animal.  Now the old horse had been in several runaways.  Once it had been hurt by a falling ladder, and it had never recovered from its fear of one.  As this one fell just under it’s nose, all the old fright and pain that caused its first runaway seemed to come back to its memory.  In a frenzy of terror it reared, plunged forward, then suddenly turned and dashed down the street.

The plunge and sudden turn threw the sleeping coachman from the box to the street.  With the lines dragging at its heels, the frightened horse sped on.  The Little Colonel, clutching frantically at the seat in front of her, screamed at the horse to stop.  She had been used to driving ever since she was big enough to grasp the reins, and she felt that if she could only reach the dragging lines, she could control the horse.  But that was impossible.  All she could do was to cling to the seat as the carriage whirled dizzily around corners, and wonder how many more frightful turns it would make before she should be thrown out.

The white houses on either side seemed racing past them.  Nurses ran, screaming, to the pavements, dragging the baby-carriages out of the way.  Dogs barked and teams were jerked hastily aside.  Some one dashed out of a shop and threw his arms up in front of the horse to stop it, but, veering to one side, it only plunged on the faster.