He had opened his eyes to see clouds and drenched trees, and to feel the drops splashing on his face. After a while his position began to seem more and more odd, so he raised himself to a sitting angle, and was immediately aware of sodden clothes, stiff limbs, a terrific headache, and a man stooping over him. His first thought was that he must have been drunk the night before, but he soon rejected it, partly because he could not remember the night before at all, partly because he somehow did not think he was the sort of young man to have had that sort of night, but chiefly because of a growing interest in what the man stooping over him was saying. It was a kind of muttered chorus—“That’s right, mister—take it easy. Didn’t ’ardly touch yer—it was the wet roadway, you sort o’ slipped. Cheer up, mister, no bones broke—you’ll be all right—wouldn’t leave you ’ere, I wouldn’t, if I didn’t know you’d be all right. …” Presently, suggested by the muttered chorus and supported by the fact that his clothes were not only sopping wet but also muddied and torn, another hypothesis occurred to him—that he had been run down by a car whose driver had brought him into the park and was now leaving him there.
What do You think about James Hilton: Collected Novels?
