it was worse. The buggy, badly hitched, bumped
against the flank of the horse, twisted over exposed
boulders, brought up suddenly in the gutters cut diagonally
by the spring torrents. Gordon Makimmon
forgot everything else in the sole desire to get
Lettice safely to their house. He endeavored, by
shifting her position, to reduce the jarring of the
uneven progress. He realized that she was in a
continual agony, and, in that new ability to share it
through the dawning consciousness of its brute actuality
in Lettice, it roused in him an impotent fury
of rebellion. It took the form of an increasing passion
of anger at the inanimate stones of the road,
against Mrs. Caley's meager profile on the dusty
hood of the buggy. He whispered enraged oaths,
worked himself into an insanity of temper. Lettice
grew rigid in his arms. For a while she iterated
dully, like the beating of a sluggish heart "bad...
bad... bad." Then dread wiped all other expression
from her face; then, again, pain pinched
her features.

The buggy creaked down the decline to their
dwelling. Gordon supported Lettice to their room;
then he stood on the porch without, waiting. The
rugged horse, still hitched, snatched with coarse, yellow
teeth at the grass. Suddenly Mrs. Caley appeared
at a door: she spoke, breaking the irascible

[[262]]

p261 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p262w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p263

v?