Still, loads of hay are proverbially soft; and since the driver of this
one continued to slumber stertorously upon its summit even after the
shock of impact, we decided not to summon a fellow-creature from
dreamland for the express purpose of distressing him with unpleasant
tidings on the subject of the paint on his tail-board. So, cutting loose
from the wreck, we silently stole away, if the reader will pardon the
expression.
It must have been about twenty minutes later, I fancy, that the gear-box
fell off. Personally I should never have noticed our bereavement, for
the din indigenous to Bill Bailey’s ordinary progress was quite
sufficient to allow a margin for such extra items of disturbance as the
sudden exposure of the gear-wheels. A few jets of a black and glutinous
compound, which I afterwards learned to recognise as gear-oil, began to
spout up through cracks in the flooring, but that was all. It was The
Gruffin who, from her retrospective coign of vantage in the spider-seat,
raised the alarm of a heavy metallic body overboard. We stopped the car,
and the gear-box was discovered in a disintegrated condition a few
hundred yards back; but as none of us was capable of restoring it to its
original position, and as Bill Bailey appeared perfectly prepared to do
without it altogether, we decided to go on _in statu quo_.
The journey, I rejoice to say, was destined not to conclude without
witnessing the final humiliation and exposure of Andy Finch. We had
pumped up the leaky tyre three times in about seven miles, when Andy,
struck by a brilliant idea, exclaimed:
“What mugs we are! What is the good of a Stepney wheel if you don’t use
it?”
A trifle ashamed of our want of resource, we laboriously detached the
Stepney from its moorings and trundled it round to the proper side of
the car. I leaned it up against its future partner and then stepped back
and waited. So did Andy. The Gruffin, anxious to learn, edged up and did
the same.
There was a long pause.
“Go ahead,” I said encouragingly, as my young friend merely continued to
regard the wheel with a mixture of embarrassment and malevolence. “I
want to see how these things are put on.”
“It’s quite easy,” said Andy desperately. “You just hold it up against
the wheel and clamp it on.”
“Then do it,” said I.
“Yes, do it!” said my loyal daughter ferociously. With me she was
determined not to spare the malefactor.
A quarter of an hour later we brought out the pump, and I once more
inflated the leaky tyre, while Andy endeavoured to replace the Stepney
wheel in its original resting-place beside the driver’s seat. Even now
the tale of his incompetence was not complete.
“This blamed Stepney won’t go back into its place,” he said plaintively.
“I fancy one of the clip things must have dropped off. It’s rather an
old-fashioned pattern, this of yours. I think we had better carry it
back loose. After all,” he added almost tearfully, evading my daughter’s
stony eye, “it doesn’t matter _how_ you carry the thing, so long——”
He withered and collapsed. Ultimately we drove home with The Gruffin
wearing the Stepney wheel round her waist, lifebuoy fashion. On reaching
home I sent for Mr. Gootch to come and take Bill Bailey away and put him
into a state of efficiency. Then I explained to Andy, during a most
consoling ten minutes, exactly what I thought of him as a mechanic, a
chauffeur, and a fellow-creature.