We left the Mannerings' house together, laughing and
talking, and cantered along the Chota Simla road as of old.
I was in haste to reach the Sanjowlie Reservoir and there make my assurance
doubly sure. The horses did their best, but seemed all too slow to my
impatient mind. Kitty was astonished at my boisterousness. "Why, Jack!" she
cried at last, "you are behaving like a child. What are you doing?"
We were just below the Convent, and from sheer wantonness I was making my
Waler plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled it with the loop of my
riding-whip.
"Doing?" I answered; "nothing, dear. That's just it. If you'd been doing
nothing for a week except lie up, you'd be as riotous as I."
"'Singing and murmuring in your feastful mirth, Joying to feel yourself alive;
Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible Earth, Lord of the senses five.'"
My quotation was hardly out of my lips before we had rounded the corner above
the Convent; and a few yards further on could see across to Sanjowlie. In the
centre of the level road stood the black and white liveries, the yellow-
paneled 'rickshaw, and Mrs. Keith-Wessington. I pulled up, looked, rubbed my
eyes, and, I believe must have said something. The next thing I knew was that
I was lying face downward on the road with Kitty kneeling above me in tears.
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