Wheels and now on four
- while the lunatic shrieked curses of disappointment at the
pedestrians who scuttled away to safety from our charging onslaughts;
and I held both hands over my mouth to keep my heart from jumping
out into my lap.
I saw, with instantaneous but photographic distinctness, a lady,
with a dog tucked under her arm, who hesitated a moment in our
very path. She was one of the largest ladies I ever saw and the
dog under her arm was certainly the smallest dog I ever saw. You
might say the lady was practically out of dog. I thought we had
her and probably her dog too; but she fell back and was saved by
a matter of half an inch or so. I think, though, we got some of
the buttons off her shirtwaist and the back trimming of her hat.
Then there was a rending, tearing crash as we took a fender off a
machine just emerging from a cross street, but my lunatic never
checked up at all. He just flung a curling ribbon of profanity
over his shoulder at the other driver and bounded onward like a
bat out of the Bad Place. That was the hour when my hair began
to turn perceptibly grayer. And yet, when by a succession of
miracles we had landed intact at my destination, the fiend seemed
to think he had done a praiseworthy and creditable thing.
