Beck Center English Dept. University Libraries Emory University
Emory Women Writers Resource Project Collections:
Women's Genre Fiction Project

The Affair at the Inn, an electronic edition

by Kate Douglas Wiggin [Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith, 1856-1923]

by Mary Findlater [Findlater, Mary, 1865-]

by Jane Findlater [Findlater, Jane Helen, 1866-1946]

by Allan McAulay [Stewart, Charlotte, 1863-]

date: 1904
source publisher: Houghton, Mifflin and Company
collection: Genre Fiction

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Mrs. MacGill

Saturday afternoon

I HAVE had a terrible experience, which has upset me completely and damaged my right knee, besides agitating me so much that I can scarcely remember how it happened. I have read that a drowning man sees his whole life before him in a flash of time. It is different with women perhaps. I saw no flash of anything, and thought only of myself,—remembering a horrible story I read somewhere about a horse in the Crimea that bit the faces of the enemy. Sir Archibald flung me against a gate. The intention was kind, I dare say, but even then I could just hear the beads ripping off my mantle, as I fell against the bars. The lane seemed full of ponies, all screaming, as I did n't know horses could scream, and kicking like so many grasshoppers.

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"It's all right! Nothing has happened!" he called to the girl, when the herd receded.

"I don't know what you two call happened," I said, as soon as I could speak. "We have been nearly killed—all of us, especially me."

I looked at Miss Pomeroy; so did Sir Archibald. She is an active girl, and at the first suggestion of danger she had scrambled headlong up a steep bank, where she clung to the roots of the hedge, entirely forgetting all about me. She now came down, and required some assistance in descending, although she had climbed up, which is more difficult, all in a moment. She was certainly pale—really pale for the first time since she came here, and did not seem to think about her hat, which was hanging half-way down her back by this time. Poor Mr. MacGill used always to say that when a pretty girl forgot her appearance there was something really serious in the air. She seemed to have forgotten, but I dare | | 72 say she really was thinking that she looked nicer that way. She came up to the young man, and held out her hand to him, saying, "Thank you, Sir Archibald." Americans are very forward, certainly. If I had said "Thank you," and offered to shake hands with him, there might have been some reason for it, although I never thought of doing so; it was decidedly Me that Sir Archibald had rescued. This did not seem to make a bit of difference to them, however. He took her hand and shook it, and then I must say had the civility to give Me his arm, and we all walked back to the hotel. I felt so shattered that I went to bed for the rest of the afternoon.

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