A coster, however, taking his girl for a Sunday airing, seemed to have the same impression about himself.  This person had flogged his donkey into a gallop alongside, and sat, upright as a waxwork, in his shallopy chariot, his chin settled pompously on a red handkerchief, like Swithin’s on his full cravat; while his girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa floating out behind, aped a woman of fashion.  Her swain moved a stick with a ragged bit of string dangling from the end, reproducing with strange fidelity the circular flourish of Swithin’s whip, and rolled his head at his lady with a leer that had a weird likeness to Swithin’s primeval stare.

Though for a time unconscious of the lowly ruffian’s presence, Swithin presently took it into his head that he was being guyed.  He laid his whip-lash across the mares flank.  The two chariots, however, by some unfortunate fatality continued abreast.  Swithin’s yellow, puffy face grew red; he raised his whip to lash the costermonger, but was saved from so far forgetting his dignity by a special intervention of Providence.  A carriage driving out through a gate forced phaeton and donkey-cart into proximity; the wheels grated, the lighter vehicle skidded, and was overturned.

Swithin did not look round.  On no account would he have pulled up to help the ruffian.  Serve him right if he had broken his neck!

But he could not if he would.  The greys had taken alarm.  The phaeton swung from side to side, and people raised frightened faces as they went dashing past.  Swithin’s great arms, stretched at full length, tugged at the reins.  His cheeks were puffed, his lips compressed, his swollen face was of a dull, angry red.

Irene had her hand on the rail, and at every lurch she gripped it tightly.  Swithin heard her ask: 

“Are we going to have an accident, Uncle Swithin?”

He gasped out between his pants:  “It’s nothing; a—­little fresh!”

“I’ve never been in an accident.”

“Don’t you move!” He took a look at her.  She was smiling, perfectly calm.  “Sit still,” he repeated.  “Never fear, I’ll get you home!”

And in the midst of all his terrible efforts, he was surprised to hear her answer in a voice not like her own: 

“I don’t care if I never get home!”

The carriage giving a terrific lurch, Swithin’s exclamation was jerked back into his throat.  The horses, winded by the rise of a hill, now steadied to a trot, and finally stopped of their own accord.

“When”—­Swithin described it at Timothy’s—­“I pulled ’em up, there she was as cool as myself.  God bless my soul! she behaved as if she didn’t care whether she broke her neck or not!  What was it she said:  ’I don’t care if I never get home?” Leaning over the handle of his cane, he wheezed out, to Mrs. Small’s terror:  “And I’m not altogether surprised, with a finickin’ feller like young Soames for a husband!”