xcellence in
his own profession, was wont to boast that you couldn't teach him much
about motors! He had laughed to scorn the remark of his Scotch chauffeur
that "they things need a deal o' humourin'!" Humour a thing of cogs and
screws? Absurd! One must master a motor, not humour her.

Half an hour later he emerged from the car's eclipse and sank, a
pitiable figure, upon the grass beside Esther.

"Won't it go?" asked Esther dreamily. It had been very pleasant sitting
there watching the sun set.

The master of motors made a tragic gesture. "No," he said, "she won't."

"Shake her," said Esther.

Dr. Callandar pushed back his sweat-bedewed hair with fingers which left
a fearsome streak above his left eyebrow. The girl laughed. But the
doctor's decorated face was rueful.

"Do you know, Miss Esther, I'm afraid it isn't a bit funny." His tone,
too, was sober; and Esther, suddenly more fully alive to the situation,
noticed that the hands clasped recklessly about the knees of once
spotless trousers were shaking, just a little. He must be awfully tired!

"That's because you can't see yourself. Give the motor a rest. There is
plenty of time. Let's have tea here instead of on the way home. There is
cold tea and chicken-loaf, bread and butter, and half a tart."

The doctor brightened. "You may have the half-tart," he concluded
generously. "And in return you will forgive me my pessimism. I believe I
am hungry and thirsty and--if I could only swear I should be all right
presently."

Esther put her small fingers in her ears and directed an absorbed gaze
toward the sunset.

Callandar laughed.

"All over!" he called. "Richard is himself again. And now we have got to
be serious. Painful as it is, I admit defeat. I can't make that car
budge an inch. It won't move. We can't push it. We have no other means
of conveyance. Deduction--we must walk!"

"Yes, only like most deductions, it doesn't get us anywhere. We _can't_
walk."

"Not to Coombe of course. Merely to the nearest farm house."

"There isn't any nearest farm house."

"Then to the nearest common or garden house."

"I thought we were going to be serious. Really, there is no house within
reasonable walking distance. We are quite in the wilds here. Don't you
remember the long stretches of waste land we came through? No one builds
on useless ground. The nearest houses of any kind are over on the other
side of the lake. The beach is good there and there are a few summe