“Oh, Mr. Coverdale, I am so frightened! He will never be able to manage those horses: he could scarcely hold them in this morning, and the groom was forced to get down to them twice--he does not know how to drive one bit!” Poor little Alice! she was trembling from head to foot, and looked so pretty and interesting in her alarm, that Harry felt peculiar, he didn’t exactly know how, about it. “I’ll speak to Mr. Crane, and persuade him to let me drive you home,” he replied eagerly. (He would have knocked him down without the smallest hesitation, if Alice had in the slightest degree preferred it.) “I’ve been accustomed to horses all my life, and have not a doubt of being able to manage these, even if the thunder should startle them; so please don’t look so frightened.” And as Harry said this with his very brightest, kindest smile, Alice wondered she had never before noticed how handsome he was, and began to think he could not be so very cross after all. When Harry urged his request, Mr. Crane was considerably embarrassed as to the nature of his reply. In his secret soul he was delighted to be relieved from the danger and responsibility of driving Alice and himself home through a thunder-storm; but, on the other hand, he could not disguise the fact, that by allowing himself to be so relieved, he should detract from the heroic style of character he wished Alice to impute to him. Had it been D’Almayne instead of Coverdale who sought to become his substitute, he would probably, at the hazard of breaking his own neck and that of his lady-love, have refused to permit him; but he had observed, as indeed he must have been blind if he had not done, Harry’s marked avoidance of the young lady, and trusting to these his mysogynistic principles he, with many excuses and much circumlocution, agreed to Harry’s proposal that he should ride his horse, and allow him to drive the phaeton. “Ahem!--if the storm should come on violently,” observed the cotton-spinner, as a second growl of thunder became audible, “I shall wait till it has subsided; so don’t let them expect me till they see me: getting wet always gives me cold.” “All right, sir,” returned Harry, as he wrapped Alice carefully up in his own Macintosh; “take care of yourself by all means--good people are scarce. We shall see nothing more of friend Crane to-night,” he continued, as he drove off; “the old gentleman is very decidedly alarmed--that is, I suppose I ought not to call him an old gentleman,” he stammered, suddenly recollecting with whom he was conversing. “Why should you not when he is so?” returned Alice, innocently. Harry turned his head away to conceal a smile which the _naïveté_ of the reply had called forth, muttering to himself as he did so, “Poor Crane!” After a few minutes’ silence, Alice began abruptly, and apologetically,--