Be sure of your
footing; don't stumble and break your neck at the last minute--one poor
last little chance, after so many glorious opportunities have gone by!"
"'Sh, Truesdale!" whispered his aunt.
For there were other people in the elevator, and they looked askance at
this smart volley of verbal superfluities.
He led them out to the carriage. "Here we are on solid ground once more,"
he continued; "best place in the world to be. No; don't ask me to get
in--I'll walk on a bit. I wouldn't leave terra firma now for anything."
He handed his aunt in, and then Bertie. He exacted from Bertie a
perfectly superfluous shake of the hand, bowed over that hand with a
sudden access of gravity, and lost himself in an abysmal reverie before
he had traversed a hundred yards.
He saw before him a high-heaped assemblage of red-tiled roofs, and above
them rose the fretwork of a soaring Gothic spire. A narrow river half
encircled the town, and a battered old bridge, guarded by a round-towered
gateway, led out into the open country towards a horizon bounded by a low
range of blue hills. Trumpet-calls rang out from distant barrack-yards,
and troops of dragoons clattered noisily over the rough pavement of the
great square. The dragoons passed, and a colony of awnings and umbrellas
sprang up in their place, and bands of stocky peasantry chattered and
chaffered, and left the pavement strewn with the loose leaves of cabbages
and carrot-tops.
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