with your gear-case, sell the machine and buy a
new one; it comes cheaper."

He said: "People talk like that who understand nothing about machines.
Nothing is easier than taking off a gear-case."

I had to confess he was right. In less than five minutes he had the gear-
case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling for screws. He
said it was always a mystery to him the way screws disappeared.

We were still looking for the screws when Ethelbertha came out. She
seemed surprised to find us there; she said she thought we had started
hours ago.

He said: "We shan't be long now. I'm just helping your husband to
overhaul this machine of his. It's a good machine; but they all want
going over occasionally."

Ethelbertha said: "If you want to wash yourselves when you have done you
might go into the back kitchen, if you don't mind; the girls have just
finished the bedrooms."

She told me that if she met Kate they would probably go for a sail; but
that in any case she would be back to lunch. I would have given a
sovereign to be going with her. I was getting heartily sick of standing
about watching this fool breaking up my bicycle.

Common sense continued to whisper to me: "Stop him, before he does any
more mischief. You have a right to protect your own property from the
ravages of a lunatic. Take him by the scruff of the neck, and kick him
out of the gate!"

But I am weak when it comes to hurting other people's feelings, and I let
him muddle on.

He gave up looking for the rest of the screws. He said screws had a
knack of turning up when you least expected them; and that now he would
see to the chain. He tightened it till it would not move; next he
loosened it until it was twice as loose as it was before. Then he said
we had better think about getting the front wheel back into its place
again.

I held the fork open, and he worried with the wheel. At the end of ten
minutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I should handle
the wheel; and we changed places. At the end of his first minute he
dropped the machine, and took a short walk round the croquet lawn, with
his hands pressed together between his thighs. He explained as he walked
that the thing to be careful about was to avoid getting your fingers
pinched between the forks and the spokes of the wheel. I replied I was
convinced, from my own experience, that there was much truth in what he
said. He wrapped himself up in a coupl