“Yes. It will need to visit the doctor before I can ride it again,” she said, and turned a look of regret on the damaged machine.
“So will you, by the look of things,” he remarked, and scrutinised her more closely.
Prudence leaned down to take her farewell of, and recompense the sisters, who, sober enough now, watched the proceedings with interest.
“I’ll send out for the cycle to-morrow,” she said.
But Major Stotford saw no necessity for leaving the cycle behind.
“It will go in the back all right. We might as well take it along,” he said, and lifted it into the car.
Lizzie, considerably more obliging than heretofore, lent a hand. When he had settled the machine he took his seat beside Prudence.
“Anyone we pass will conclude that I’ve run you down, and that I’m taking home the pieces,” he said, smiling at her with curious intimacy, as the car took the long hill, and the girl leaned back white and weary against the cushions. He drew a flask from his pocket and handed it to her. “Don’t look so horrified. If you could see the colour of your face you would realise as surely as I do that this is what you need. Take a good pull at it and you’ll feel better.”
“I begin to believe that the lamp on my bicycle must once have belonged to Aladdin,” Prudence said with a quiet little laugh of enjoyment. “I rubbed it to some purpose in the dust of the road. Whatever I require appears.”
Major Stotford laughed with her. The thought in his mind, which he was careful not to express in words, was that she carried the magic within her. He leaned forward and altered the pace of the car, which had been running at top speed.