Touch and Go Read Free

and a car of her own! Pride of ownership inflated her.
    â€œI hope the brat’s not half-witted. I’d like to have seen her before we clicked. Anyhow beggars can’t be choosers, and I’m in luck, luck, luck!”
    The lodge gates came in sight, with the road beyond them and the dark hedge on its farther side. And then with appalling suddenness someone screamed and fell. It was all just in one flash of time—the sound of a cracking branch, and the fall, and the scream. Something cut the beam of the off-side headlight and went down through it into the dark. The something was registered in Sarah’s mind as a head with a nimbus of fair hair. She pulled the wheel over violently and jammed on her brakes. The Bomb ran into the left-hand bank and stopped. It all took no time at all to happen. Crash, scream, stop, and the head with the fair floating hair—they were all there together without any time going by.
    Time began again when Sarah got the door open and jumped out. Her legs didn’t shake. If they had belonged to her, they would probably have been shaking like anything, so perhaps it was just as well that they didn’t belong to her. Her hands didn’t belong to her either, but one of them had got hold of her pocket-torch and was turning the narrow pencil of light to and fro. The light moved quite steadily. The hand was quite steady. From a very, very long way off Sarah was looking for the head. It was like the worst sort of awful nightmare. When a nightmare was as bad as that, you generally woke up. Meanwhile she had got to find the head.
    The ray picked out the gravel of the drive stone by stone. It picked out a dry fallen leaf, the ghost of a leaf, with a shadow like spilled ink. Every pebble had its shadow too. And then the light was on the soft fair hair. The hand that wasn’t Sarah’s didn’t shake at all. It moved the torch, and the torch moved the ray. There was all that fair hair, and a white face, and a body that belonged to the head. The body was clothed in something woolly and black which came right up to the chin and down to the wrists.
    Sarah put out her left hand and felt. The head appeared to be quite firmly attached to the body, and the body jerked as she touched it. The ray, crossing the face again, showed the eyes open and blinking. In a fusing flash of rage Sarah’s limbs became her own again and Sarah herself ceased to be about a thousand miles away. She was kneeling on the gravel path shaking a black woolly shoulder and demanding in a voice of fury,
    â€œBlithering idiot! What did you do that for?” And then, still at boiling point, “Are you hurt?”
    The shoulder heaved and the owner sat up.
    â€œWh-what happened?”
    â€œDon’t you know?” said Sarah.
    The shoulder heaved again, this time with a giggle that turned into a sob.
    â€œOf c-course I don’t.”
    Sarah used some regrettable language.
    â€œYou blinking little idiot! Didn’t you see my lights—didn’t you hear me? People who’ve been stone deaf for years can hear The Bomb . I suppose you know you’re pretty lucky to be alive. You haven’t broken anything, have you?”
    â€œN-no,” said the voice with a catch in it, “I d-don’t think so.”
    Sarah took her hand away and got up.
    â€œYou’d know if you had. Get up and see if you can walk! I’m Sarah Trent, and I suppose you’re Lucilla Hildred. Now, where did you fall from, and what were you doing there anyhow?”
    Lucilla scrambled up, said “Ouch!” and giggled again. “Nothing’s broken. I was up on the bank. I wanted to see you pass.”
    â€œAnd how did you think you were going to see me in the dark?”
    â€œI’d got a torch—I was going to shoot it at you as you passed.”
    â€œNice child!” said Sarah. “You might have made me run into the bank. If that’s what you wanted, you’ve done