I didn't want to pretend that I
knew him for a lord, "but my mistress's car has come by a bit of
trouble, and she sent me to ask if any one could help her."

"What, you're broken down----"

"It's just that, sir; magneto gone absolutely wrong. I shall have to
be towed if I go any further to-night."

He stood on the steps beside me, and seemed to hesitate an instant. A
word and he would have told his own chauffeur to drive us on to
Sandwich; but it was never spoken, and I'll tell you why. Miss Dolly
herself had followed me up the drive, and she arrived upon the scene at
that very instant.

"Oh, I am so sorry to trouble you," she cried in her sweetest voice,
"but my car's gone all wrong, and I'm so tired and hungry, I don't know
what to do. Will you let me rest here just a little while?"

Talk about actresses; there isn't one of 'em in the West End would have
done half so well. There she was, looking the picture of distress, and
there was his lordship, twisting his moustache, and eyeing her as one
who was at his wits' end to know what to do. If he didn't take long to
come to a resolution, put it down to Dolly's blue eyes--he couldn't see
the colour of them at that time of night, but he could feel them, I'll
be bound; and, jumping, as it were, to a conclusion he turned to his
man and gave him an order.

"This lady will stay here to-night," he said. "Go and help her driver
to get the car in, and see that he is looked after," and without
another word he waited for Miss Dolly to enter the house. Believe me,
I never thought Mr. John's stock stood higher--and "Britten, my boy,"
says I to myself, "if this isn't worth a cool fifty when the right time
comes, don't you never drive a pretty girl no more."

I had a rare lark that night, partly with Biggs, his lordship's
chauffeur, and partly with a motor expert who came along on a bicycle,
and said he'd have my Renault going in twenty minutes. I'm not one
that can stand a billet in servants' quarters, and I chose rather to
put up at the little inn down by the bay and take my luck there. It
was here that Biggs came after supper, and he and the motor expert got
going on my high-tension magneto.

Bless the pair of them, they might have been a month there, and no
better off--for, you must know that I had taken out the armature, and
if you take out an armature and don't slip a bit of soft iron in after
it, your magnets are done for, and will never be worth anything again