“Why didn’t you jump out?” said Macleod to him, after seeing that the cabman was all right.
Ogilvie did not answer; he was looking at his besmeared hands and dishevelled clothes.
“Confound it!” said he; “what’s to be done now? The house is just round the corner.”
“Let us go in, and they will lend you a clothesbrush.”
“As if I had been fighting a bargee? No, thank you. I will go along till I find some tavern, and get myself put to rights.”
And this he did gloomily, Macleod accompanying him. It was about a quarter of an hour before he had completed his toilet; and then they set out to walk back to Prince’s Gate. Mr. Ogilvie was in a better humor.
“What a fellow you are to jump, Macleod!” said he. “If you had cannoned against that policeman you would have killed him. And you never paid the cabman for destroying the lid of the door; you prized the thing clean off its hinges. You must have the strength of a giant.”
“But where the people came from—it was that surprised me,” said Macleod, who seemed to have rather enjoyed the adventure. “It was like one of our sea-lochs in the Highlands—you look all round and cannot find any gull anywhere but throw a biscuit into the water, and you will find them appearing from all quarters at once. As for the door, I forgot that; but I gave the man half a sovereign to console him for his shaking. Was not that enough?”
“We shall be frightfully late for luncheon,” said Mr. Ogilvie, with some concern.