Part 21 (1/2)
Far up the shaded road into secluded Bromlingleigh we saw the carrier's cart at rest before the post-office.
”He's bung in the fairway. How'm I to get past?” said Hinchcliffe.
”There's no room. Here, Pye, come and relieve the wheel!”
”Nay, nay, Pauline. You've made your own bed. You've as good as left your happy home an' family cart to steal it. Now you lie on it.”
”Ring your bell,” I suggested.
”Glory!” said Pyecroft, falling forward into the nape of Hinchcliffe's neck as the car stopped dead.
”Get out o' my back-hair! That must have been the brake I touched off,”
Hinchcliffe muttered, and repaired his error tumultuously.
We pa.s.sed the cart as though we had been all Bruges belfry. Agg, from the port-office door, regarded us with a too pacific eye. I remembered later that the pretty postmistress looked on us pityingly.
Hinchcliffe wiped the sweat from his brow and drew breath. It was the first vehicle that he had pa.s.sed, and I sympathised with him.
”You needn't grip so hard,” said my engineer. ”She steers as easy as a bicycle.”
”Ho! You suppose I ride bicycles up an' down my engine-room?” was the answer. ”I've other things to think about. She's a terror. She's a whistlin' lunatic. I'd sooner run the old South-Easter at Simon's Town than her!”
”One of the nice things they say about her,” I interrupted, ”is that no engineer is needed to run this machine.”
”No. They'd need about seven.”
”'Common-sense only is needed,'” I quoted.
”Make a note of that, Hinch. Just common-sense,” Pyecroft put in.
”And now,” I said, ”we'll have to take in water. There isn't more than a couple of inches of water in the tank.”
”Where d'you get it from?”
”Oh!--cottages and such-like.”
”Yes, but that being so, where does your much-advertised twenty-five miles an hour come in? Ain't a dung-cart more to the point?”
”If you want to go anywhere, I suppose it would be,” I replied.
”_I_ don't want to go anywhere. I'm thinkin' of you who've got to live with her. She'll burn her tubes if she loses her water?”
”She will.”
”I've never scorched yet, and I not beginnin' now.” He shut off steam firmly. ”Out you get, Pye, an' shove her along by hand.”
”Where to?”
”The nearest water-tank,” was the reply. ”And Suss.e.x is a dry county.”
”She ought to have drag-ropes--little pipe-clayed ones,” said Pyecroft.