Chapter 10

"Can't say. Never thought! ... Fact is--my wife had frightened me horribly. When your machine bore down on her--posted right in the middle of the gravel--I was scared stiff--give you my honour!--you might have sunk a brace of Dreadnoughts in the palms of my hands!" Franky made this absurd statement with so sincere an air, and clinched it so effectually by displaying a lovely silk-cambric handkerchief in a state of soppy limpness, that the abrased inventor nearly laughed. But his thick, silvery, fair eyebrows sett…