ite, than at any other time, I think--though
into the midst of my laugh came a sudden little pain. It was in my left
wrist, and it ached hard, one quick throb after another, as if they were
in a hurry to get their chance to hurt. But I didn't say anything, for
it seemed such a trifle. Brown assured me that he was "right as rain,"
that he'd only been dazed and perhaps unconscious for a minute through
falling on his head. I wondered if he knew about Aunt Mary. But it was
too delicate a subject to raise. Anyway, she hadn't a bruise. And wasn't
it extraordinary about Jimmy? The car had "fallen on its feet," so to
speak, and he had hung on to the steering-post so hard that not only had
he kept his seat, but he had wrenched the steering-gear. Brown
discovered this in peering into the works by the light of one of our own
oil-lamps, relit from the carter's lantern. If the Napier hadn't been a
magnificent car it would have been frightfully damaged, although,
finding itself compelled to take a twelve-foot jump off the road, it had
cleverly chosen comparatively smooth, meadow-like ground to descend
upon. Not even a tyre was punctured; no harm whatever appeared to have
been done except that, as I said, owing to Jimmy's savage contortions in
search of safety, the steering-gear was wrenched.

There's a thing called a worm in steering-gear, it seems, also a rod;
and new ones would have to be fitted in ours before we could go on
again. When I heard this I felt rather qualmish, for my wrist was aching
a good deal, and had begun to swell. Brown and the carter were talking
together, and according to them the best thing seemed to be to carry
luggage and rugs to the nearest village, Le Beausset, and try to get
accommodation there for the night. Brown would go on to Toulon, he said,
and try to get new parts for the car, with which he'd come back early in
the morning.

Still I didn't say anything about my wrist. Aunt Mary and I scrambled
up the bank, and Brown, Jimmy, and the carter went back and forth for
our things. The latter had been going away from Le Beausset, not towards
it when the accident happened, but he agreed to turn round and take our
luggage on his cart to the village. He made room for Aunt Mary too,
sitting on bags and portmanteaus like Marius on the ruins of Carthage,
and the rest of us walked, about a mile.

Le Beausset proved to be a tiny place, and at the solitary inn there was
but one small bedroom to let, the rest bein