Nurses ran,
screaming, to the pavements, dragging the baby-carriages out of the way.
Dogs barked and teams were jerked hastily aside. Some one dashed out of
a shop and threw his arms up in front of the horse to stop it, but,
veering to one side, it only plunged on the faster.
Lloyd's hat blew off. Her face turned white with a sickening dread, and
her breath began to come in frightened sobs. On and on they went, and,
as the scenes of a lifetime will be crowded into a moment in the memory
of a drowning man, so a thousand things came flashing into Lloyd's mind.
She saw the locust avenue all white and sweet in blossom time, and
thought, with a strange thrill of self-pity, that she would never ride
under its white arch again. Then came her mother's face, and Papa
Jack's. In a few moments, she told herself, they would be picking up her
poor, broken, lifeless little body from the street. How horribly they
would feel. And then--she screamed and shut her eyes. The carriage had
dashed into something that tore off a wheel. There was a crash--a sound
as of splintering wood. But it did not stop their mad flight. With a
horrible bumping motion that nearly threw her from the carriage at
every jolt, they still kept on.
[Illustration: "BUT IT DID NOT STOP THEIR MAD FLIGHT"]
They were on the quay now. The noon sun on the water flashed into her
eyes like the blinding light thrown back from a looking-glass.
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