"
"It does matter most infernally. Don't you know that you make no more
than a featherweight of difference to the car?"
"I feel as if I weighed a thousand pounds, now."
"It's that snow!"
"No. It's you. Your crossness. I _can't_ have people cross to me, on
lonely mountains, just when I'm trying to help them."
His glare of rage turned to a stare of surprise. "Cross? Do you think I
was cross to you?"
"Yes. And you just stopped in time, or you would have been worse."
"Oh, I see," he said. "You thought that the 'epithet' was going to be
invidious, did you?"
"Naturally."
"Well, it wasn't. I--no, I _won't_ say it! That would be the last folly.
But--I wasn't going to be cross. I can't have you think that, whatever
happens. Now sit still and be good, while I push again."
I weighed no more than half the thousand pounds now, and the cannon ball
had dissolved like a chocolate cream; but the car stood like a rock,
fixed, immutable.
"There ought to be half a dozen of me," said the chauffeur. "Look here,
little pal, there's nothing else for it; I must trudge off to St.
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