The coach lay a little drunkenly against the raised bank and it appeared that the nearside wheel was damaged. Otherwise the disaster seemed slight.

It was then that through the lowered window a vision appeared and a soft little voice asked rather breathlessly,

“What has – happened?”

The face was entrancing. Small and heart-shaped it possessed a tiny tip-tilted nose, a full red mouth and two large blue eyes. These were all framed by a profusion of gold curls that had escaped from a chip straw bonnet which in the confusion had fallen onto her shoulders.

“Allow me, madam.”

Another voice spoke now and a young gentleman who had been the passenger in the curricle, gorgeously attired in skin-tight buckskin breeches and a dazzling blue satin coat, climbed down and hurrying forward swept his high-crowned hat from his head.

“Oh, wait a minute,” the vision said as he put out a hand to open the door. “We are in a vast confusion.”

She disappeared from the window and then, as the young gentleman, pulling with all his strength, managed to open the door, it was to find himself assisting another lady to alight.

Fat, buxom, with a red face and brown eyes swimming with tears, she heaved herself with some difficulty down onto the roadway, exclaiming as she did so,

“Lawks amercy! I never did trust these darned coaches and I never shall.”

The young gallant supported her arm, but it was obvious from his glances over her shoulder into the interior of the coach that he was more concerned to see the vision again than in proffering his help from a humane point of view.

The gentleman, who had driven the curricle and ordered the coachman to the horses’ heads, sat watching with the faintest smile on his lips and a quizzical look in his dark hard eyes.

The vision reappeared.

“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously, speaking not to the gallant waiting with an outstretched hand to assist her to alight but to the stout woman now standing in the roadway.

“Quite all right, thank you, dearie. Although I’m as sure as I’m standin’ here that every bone in my body is bruised or broken.”

The vision laughed and then, taking the hand that was proffered to her, seemed to float onto the ground as lightly as a piece of thistledown.

“Are you certain you are not hurt, madam?” the gallant asked, holding her hand a little longer than was necessary.

“Oh, quite, I thank you,” she replied. “But I am afraid that the other traveller with us is badly bruised. We all seemed to fall on top of him.”

She turned back and smiled at an elderly man who must have been a Schoolmaster and who was descending with a little carpet bag in his hand.