are we to do now?" wailed Jane.

"Let us walk down to the village church together and I don't think it
would be wrong if we said a little prayer."

They had reached the front garden when the Ford car, making a
considerable fuss about it, banged and snorted past the front gate.

There are those perhaps who will condemn Mrs. Barraclough's action, but
let them remember she was a mother. After all it stands to the credit
of any mid-Victorian lady who, notwithstanding the ravages of seventy
years, is able to pick up a flower pot and hurl it accurately into a
moving vehicle. The Reverend Prometheus Bolt caught the missile full
in the side of the head and the last view the old lady had of him was
under a shower of dirt and broken pottery, while from his lips arose a
cloud of invective more azure than the skies.

From where the car had been standing appeared Cynthia the cook. In her
hand she carried a watering can, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes
wild.

"I'd have done in their car if you'd held 'em a moment longer," she
panted indignantly. "Didn't have time to slash their tyres but I did
manage to get about half a pint of water in the petrol tank before they
slung me into the hedge."

And very valuable was the help thus afforded for within a mile the Ford
had banged and snuffled itself to a standstill and twenty minutes were
lost draining the tank and blotting up the rust coloured drops from the
bottom of the float chamber. Both Dirk and Bolt were in favour of
returning to the house in order to conduct a punitive campaign, but
Harrison Smith would not hear of this.

"We must push the damn car all we know how," he said, Working
feverishly at the union of the induction pipe with a spanner that
didn't fit. "If we haven't caught up with them by eight o'clock I
shall drop Bolt at a post office and he must get through to the Chief."

"What, the Dutchman?"

"No choice. It's infernal luck, but better that than let him get
through with the thing."

"If you ask me, Smith," said Bolt critically. "If you ask my opinion
I'd say you've made a bloomer of this show."

"You can keep your opinion till I do ask for it," came the retort.
"Get in. She's clear now."

He took a heave on the starting handle and jumped to his place at the
wheel.

"Keep your eye on those tyre marks, Dirk. If you lose 'em I'll break
your head."

And from the spirit of this remark it will be seen that kindliness and
fellowship had gone by