Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight by Elizabeth von Arnim
page 25 of 302 (08%)
"Heavens, no," said Priscilla, pressing onward.

Outside Rühl, about a hundred yards before its houses begin, there is
a pond by the wayside. Into this, after waiting a moment peering up
and down the dark road to see whether anybody was looking, Fritzing
hurled the bicycles. He knew the pond was deep, for he had studied it
the day he bought Priscilla's outfit; and the two bicycles one after
the other were hurled remorsely into the middle of it, disappearing
each in its turn with a tremendous splash and gurgle. Then they walked
on quickly towards the railway station, infinitely relieved to be on
their own feet again, and between them, all unsuspected, walked the
radiant One with the smiling eyes, she who was half-minded to see this
game through, giving the players just so many frights as would keep
her amused, the fickle, laughing goddess Good Luck.

They caught the train neatly at Rühl. They only had to wait about the
station for ten minutes before it came in. Hardly any one was there,
and nobody took the least notice of them. Fritzing, after a careful
look round to see if it contained people he knew, put the Princess
into a second-class carriage labelled _Frauen_, and then respectfully
withdrew to another part of the train. He had decided that
second-class was safest. People in that country nearly always travel
second-class, especially women,--at all times in such matters more
economical than men; and a woman by herself in a first-class carriage
would have been an object of surmise and curiosity at every station.
Therefore Priscilla was put into the carriage labelled _Frauen_, and
found herself for the first time in her life alone with what she had
hitherto only heard alluded to vaguely as the public.

She sat down in a corner with an odd feeling of surprise at being
DigitalOcean Referral Badge