Out of the depths: "Tch! Tch! Push me sideways, then." The mammoth stern is pushed sideways and hauled backways, and presently begins to rise, and presently the stout tutor is ponderously disgorged from the hedge, and staggers forth with grunts and moans, and collapses on the roadside, feet in ditch, very bedraggled and unfortunate looking. "Don't think I'm laughing at you," Percival says. "I'm really very sorry for you. But you're not hurt, you know. Let me rub you down with leaves." "I am terribly shaken. Do not touch me for a few minutes, please." "Is the fly still in your eye?" "I don't know where the fly is." "Your trousers are awfully torn." "Be silent, please. I am dazed." He remains dazed when at last they begin to trudge home, the wrecked tricycle left for a cart. But at the top of the hill that plunged them to disaster, the infectious spurts of laughter at his side challenge his self-esteem and he sets out to sound his reputation in Percival's regard. "I think I steered rather well, considering I couldn't see." Percival is always generous: "Splendidly! Oh, dear, I'm aching with laughing!" "I was only afraid for you, Percival." "We whizzed, you know! We simply whizzed!" Mr. Purdie glances back down the hill and shudders to have whizzed it. "Were you laughing all the way down?" "Anybody would laugh at a whizz like that." The plump tutor has a close acquaintance with one person who would not. The remark pricks him and he finds a comforting answer. "Only very silly people laugh at danger." "Well, I didn't know it was danger," said Percival; and Mr. Purdie first looks at him thoughtfully and then gives one of his shrill, absurd chuckles. III Happy, happy time! There were the visits to Mr. Hannaford, always made on a whole holiday because an early start was necessary, where the little 'orse farm was progressing famously and where Percival was made quite extraordinarily welcome. Terrible leg-and-cane cracks would announce in which quarter of the farm Mr. Hannaford was to be found, and Percival would discover Mr. Hannaford watching a little circus 'orse at exercise, or watching the builders at work in the brick stables that were slowly displacing the line of sheds, and watching all the time to the accompaniment of bellowing instructions punctuated by leg-and-cane cracks of astounding volume. Percival would plant himself squarely by Mr. Hannaford's side in Mr. Hannaford's position--legs apart, head thrown back--and would eagerly follow the proceedings until Mr. Hannaford suddenly would observe him and would cry in a voice the whole farm might hear: "Why, it's the little Pocket Marvel! Bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't! However long a you been there, little master?" Percival, beaming all over his face and putting his small hand into the tremendous shake of Mr. Hannaford's shoulder of mutton fist: "Only about ten minutes, thank you, Mr. Hannaford. Don't you mind me, you know. I like watching."