.

"I thought you said you knew the moves," remarked Ansell. "Surely this
is wrong?"

"The bally beast's lopsided," said Haynes with heat. "One side of his
mouth's hard and the other soft."

"The difficulty being," I suggested as we lurched across the road into
the other ditch, "to discover which is which.... Now you're straight.
We'd better trot. It's only a one-day match."

Haynes used the ancient whip, which had as much effect as tickling a
rhinoceros with a feather.

"Goad him with a penknife," suggested Ansell unfeelingly.

"There must be some way," said Haynes. "Because they _do_ trot, you
know."

"Speaking as one ignorant amateur to another," I asked, "isn't the right
thing to pull gently on the reins and then slacken? You go on doing it
till the animal gets your meaning. Try it."

Haynes tried it, and Bucephalus stopped dead. Repetition of the
treatment simply produced a tendency to back.

"For heaven's sake don't lose any of the ground we've gained," said
Ansell. "Let's get on, if only at a walk."

"We shall have to tow him," decided Haynes. He got out and hauled at the
bridle, but Bucephalus refused to budge.

"This," said Ansell, becoming suddenly business-like, "is where the Boy
Hero modestly but firmly takes charge. Jump in."

He picked up the reins and, though he apparently did nothing in
particular with them, Bucephalus came to life at once and broke into a
lumbering trot.

"You silly chump, why didn't you say you could drive?" asked Haynes.

"Nobody asked me," said the Boy Hero modestly, "and I was shy."

At the time when we had been scheduled to reach the cricket-ground we
had still a mile to go along a narrow leafy road, hardly more than a
lane. The cars were overdue, and Haynes, whose haughty spirit could not
brook the idea of being passed by jeering plutocrats, propounded a
scheme.

"They can't pass us unless we go into the ditch," he explained. "So when
they come we'll pretend to be asleep, take up the middle of the road,
and simply ignore them. We'll get there first, after all."

A moment later we heard the buzz of engines. I took a hurried glance
round and saw the sunlight on brasswork as the car came round a distant
corner.

"It's them," I said.

The reins dropped slackly on Bucephalus's back and he slowed to a walk.
Inside the governess-cart all was somnolent peace. Behind us the car was
already beginning to make remarks on one of those abusive
press-the-button horns. "