passing her eyes looked into his, and but for the ever coward heart of a true lover he could have sworn that she flushed a faint pink. He trotted on for twenty yards, and then wheeled his horse at the sound of runaway hoofs. The bays had bolted.
Remsen sent his chestnut after the victoria like a shot. There was work cut out for the impersonator of Policeman O’Roon. The chestnut ranged alongside the off bay thirty seconds after the chase began, rolled his eye back at Remsen, and said in the only manner open to policemen’s horses:
“Well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You’re not O’Roon, but it seems to me if you’d lean to the right you could reach the reins of that foolish, slow-running bay—ah! you’re all right; O’Roon couldn’t have done it more neatly!”
The runaway team was tugged to an inglorious halt by Remsen’s tough muscles. The driver released his hands from the wrapped reins, jumped from his seat and stood at the heads of the team. The chestnut, approving his new rider, danced and pranced, reviling equinely the subdued bays. Remsen, lingering, was dimly conscious of a vague, impossible, unnecessary old gentleman in a Scotch cap who talked incessantly about something. And he was acutely conscious of a pair of violet eyes that would have drawn Saint Pyrites from his iron pillar—or whatever the allusion is—and of the lady’s smile and look—a little fright-
[86]
