This was spoken in a more decided tone than I had happened to hear until then from my gentlest of all gentle brides. At the same time she put up her hand and took mine prisoner, but merely drew it away from the forbidden ringlet, and then immediately released it. Now, I am a fidgety little man and always love to have something in my fingers; so that, being debarred from my wife`s curls, I looked about me for any other plaything. On the front seat of the coach there was one of those small baskets in which travelling ladies who are too delicate to appear at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits and cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments, merely to sustain nature to the journey`s end. Such airy diet will sometimes keep them in pretty good flesh for a week together. Laying hold of this same little basket, I thrust my hand under the newspaper with which it was carefully covered.
“What`s this, my dear?” cried I, for the black neck of a bottle had popped out of the basket.
“A bottle of Kalydor, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife, coolly taking the basket from my hands and replacing it on the front seat.
Possibility of doubting
There was no possibility of doubting my wife`s word, but I never knew genuine Kalydor such as I use for my own complexion to smell so much like cherry-brandy. I was about to express my fears that the lotion would injure her skin, when an accident occurred which threatened more than a skin-deep injury. Our Jehu had carelessly driven over a heap of gravel and fairly capsized the coach, with the wheels in the air and our heels where our heads should have been. What became of my wits I cannot imagine: they have always had a perverse trick of deserting me just when they were most needed; but so it chanced that in the confusion of our overthrow I quite forgot that there was a Mrs. Bullfrog in the world. Like many men`s wives, the good lady served her husband as a stepping-stone. I had scrambled out of the coach and was instinctively settling my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly by me and I heard a smart thwack upon the coachman`s ear.
“Take that, you villain!” cried a strange, hoarse voice. “You have ruined me, you blackguard! I shall never be the woman I have been.”
And then came a second thwack, aimed at the driver`s other ear, but which missed it and hit him on the nose, causing a terrible effusion of blood. Now, who or what fearful apparition was inflicting this punishment on the poor fellow remained an impenetrable mystery to me. The blows were given by a person of grisly aspect with a head almost bald and sunken cheeks, apparently of the feminine gender, though hardly to be classed in the gentler sex. There being no teeth to modulate the voice, it had a mumbled fierceness—not passionate, but stern —which absolutely made me quiver like calves`-foot jelly.
Who could the phantom be? The most awful circumstance of the affair is yet to be told, for this ogre or whatever it was had a riding-habit like Mrs. Bullfrog`s, and also a green silk calash dangling down her back by the strings. In my terror and turmoil of mind I could imagine nothing less than that the Old Nick at the moment of our overturn had annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats. This idea seemed the more probable since I could nowhere perceive Mrs. Bullfrog alive, nor, though I looked very sharp about the coach, could I detect any traces of that beloved woman`s dead body. There wouldn`t have been a comfort in giving her Christian burial.
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