"We're getting along capitally," said Miss Aubrey. "At this rate we shall be at the station half an hour too soon."
"Unless we meet with some excitement!" ventured Gwethyn hopefully.
If Gwethyn craved for excitement, she was soon to find it. They had not gone half a mile farther before their way was barred by an enormous bull, which, to judge by a gap in the hedge, must have broken out of a neighbouring field. There it stood, in a dip of the road, right in their path, tossing its great head, pawing the ground, and bellowing lustily. The cyclists jumped off their machines, decidedly scared by the apparition that faced them.
"Oh, but doesn't it look a splendid subject?" gasped Katrine, whose artistic instincts were uppermost even at such a crisis. "If we could only draw it!"
"Don't be idiotic!" cried Nan Bethell. "It would be like taking a snapshot of a lion when it's rushing at you with open jaws!"
"I'm sure Rosa Bonheur or Lucy Kemp-Welch would have sketched it."
"Then they'd have been impaled, one on each horn, and serve them right for tempting Providence. Look at the dust the creature's raising in the road!"
All the party were in consternation. Miss Aubrey, who felt the responsibility of her charge, and moreover had a natural fear of bulls, for once almost lost her presence of mind.
"What are we to do? It would be madness to try and ride past it. I suppose we shall have to turn back home," she fluttered.
"Can't we call for help? Halloo!" shouted some of the girls.
Then Githa, who had been standing silently by her bicycle, suddenly assumed direction of the situation.
"Stop shouting! You'll excite the bull!" she commanded. "Now let us stack our machines in the ditch, and climb over this fence into the field. Come along, quick! This way!"
It seemed such excellent advice that even Miss Aubrey obeyed quite meekly. Leaving their bicycles below, they all scrambled hastily up the bank and over some hurdles into a field.
"We're safe, but we shall lose our train!" lamented Gladwin Riley.
"Not a bit of it! We'll turn up in time at the station, you'll see!" replied Githa. "Just leave it to me!"
She broke a stick from the hedge, picked up several large stones, and then ran along the meadow for some distance and climbed another fence. All at once the girls realized her intention. She was descending into the road in the rear of the bull.