ou'll never get a
four-wheeler on a day like this.'

Aunt Annie raised her veil and looked at her sister. Like many
strong-minded and vigorous women, she had a dislike of hansoms which
amounted to dread. She feared a hansom as though it had been a
revolver--something that might go off unexpectedly at any moment and
destroy her.

'I daren't go in that,' she admitted frankly. She was torn between her
allegiance to the darling Henry and her fear of the terrible machine.

'Suppose I go with you?' Mrs. Knight suggested.

'Very well,' said Aunt Annie, clenching her teeth for the sacrifice.

Sarah flew for Mrs. Knight's bonnet, fur mantle, gloves, and muff; and
with remarkably little delay the sisters and the manuscript started.
First they had the window down because of the snow and the sleet; then
they had it up because of the impure air; and lastly Aunt Annie wedged a
corner of the manuscript between the door and the window, leaving a slit
of an inch or so for ventilation. The main body of the manuscript she
supported by means of her muff.

Alas! her morbid fear of hansoms was about to be justified--at any
rate, justified in her own eyes. As the machine was passing along Walham
Green, it began to overtake a huge market-cart laden, fraught, and piled
up with an immense cargo of spring onions from Isleworth; and just as
the head of the horse of the hansom drew level with the tail of the
market-cart, the off hind wheel of the cart succumbed, and a ton or more
of spring onions wavered and slanted in the snowy air. The driver of the
hansom did his best, but he could not prevent his horse from premature
burial amid spring onions. The animal nobly resisted several
hundredweight of them, and then tottered and fell and was lost to view
under spring onions. The ladies screamed in concert, and discovered
themselves miraculously in the roadway, unhurt, but white and
breathless. A constable and a knife-grinder picked them up.

The accident was more amusing than tragic, though neither Mrs. Knight
nor Aunt Annie was capable of perceiving this fact. The horse emerged
gallantly, unharmed, and the window of the hansom was not even cracked.
The constable congratulated everyone and took down the names of the two
drivers, the two ladies, and the knife-grinder. The condition of the
weather fortunately, militated against the formation of a large crowd.

Quite two minutes elapsed before Aunt Annie made the horrible discovery
that _Love in