I was perhaps more conscious of the moral smash than the physical—­ more alive to broken hearts than to broken chaises; for, as plain as the sun at morning, there was a screw loose in this runaway match.  It is always a bad sign when the lower classes laugh:  their taste in humour is both poor and sinister; and for a man, running the posts with four horses, presumably with open pockets, and in the company of the most entrancing little creature conceivable, to have come down so far as to be laughed at by his own postillions, was only to be explained on the double hypothesis, that he was a fool and no gentleman.

I have said they were man and woman.  I should have said man and child.  She was certainly not more than seventeen, pretty as an angel, just plump enough to damn a saint, and dressed in various shades of blue, from her stockings to her saucy cap, in a kind of taking gamut, the top note of which she flung me in a beam from her too appreciative eye.  There was no doubt about the case:  I saw it all.  From a boarding-school, a black-board, a piano, and Clementi’s Sonatinas, the child had made a rash adventure upon life in the company of a half-bred hawbuck; and she was already not only regretting it, but expressing her regret with point and pungency.

As I alighted they both paused with that unmistakable air of being interrupted in a scene.  I uncovered to the lady and placed my services at their disposal.

It was the man who answered.  ‘There’s no use in shamming, sir,’ said he.  ’This lady and I have run away, and her father’s after us:  road to Gretna, sir.  And here have these nincompoops spilt us in the ditch and smashed the chaise!’

‘Very provoking,’ said I.

‘I don’t know when I’ve been so provoked!’ cried he, with a glance down the road, of mortal terror.

‘The father is no doubt very much incensed?’ I pursued civilly.

‘O God!’ cried the hawbuck.  ’In short, you see, we must get out of this.  And I’ll tell you what—­it may seem cool, but necessity has no law—­if you would lend us your chaise to the next post-house, it would be the very thing, sir.’

‘I confess it seems cool,’ I replied.

‘What’s that you say, sir?’ he snapped.

‘I was agreeing with you,’ said I.  ’Yes, it does seem cool; and what is more to the point, it seems unnecessary.  This thing can be arranged in a more satisfactory manner otherwise, I think.  You can doubtless ride?’

This opened a door on the matter of their previous dispute, and the fellow appeared life-sized in his true colours.  ’That’s what I’ve been telling her:  that, damn her! she must ride!’ he broke out.  ‘And if the gentleman’s of the same mind, why, damme, you shall!’

As he said so, he made a snatch at her wrist, which she evaded with horror.

I stepped between them.

‘No, sir,’ said I; ‘the lady shall not.’

He turned on me raging.  ‘And who are you to interfere?’ he roared.