the near-side wheels pawing thin air.

Had there been another bend we should have accomplished it upside
down. Fortunately there were no more; but there remained the village
street. We pounced on it like a tiger upon its prey.

"Blow your horn!" I screamed to the child.

"Bulb's bust," said he shortly, and exhibited the instrument, its
squeeze missing.

I have one accomplishment--only one--acquired at the tender age of
eleven at the price of relentless practice and a half-share in a
ferret. I can whistle on my fingers. Sweeping into that unsuspecting
hamlet I remembered this lone accomplishment of mine, plunged two
fingers into my cheeks and emptied my chest through them.

"Honk, honk," blasted something in my ear and, glancing round, I saw
that the child had swallowed the bulbless end of his horn and was
using it bugle-wise.

Thus, shrilling and honking, we swooped through Bailleul-aux-Hondains,
zig-zagging from kerb to kerb. A speckly cock and his platoon of hens
were out in midstream, souvenir-hunting. We took them in the rear
before they had time to deploy and sent a cloud of fluff-_fricassee_
sky-high. A Tommy was passing the time o' day with the Hebe of the
Hotel des Trois Enfants, his mules contentedly browsing the straw
frost-packing off the town water supply. The off-donkey felt the hot
breath of the car on his hocks and gained the _salle-a-manger_ (_via_
the window) in one bound, taking master and mate along with him.

The great-great-granddam of the hamlet was tottering across to the
undertakers to have her coffin tried on, when my frantic whistling and
the bray of the bugle-horn pierced the deafness of a century. With a
loud creaking of hinges she turned her head, summed up the situation
at a glance and, casting off half-a-dozen decades "like raiment
laid apart," sprang for the side-walk with the agility of an infant
gazelle. We missed her by half-an-inch and she had nobody but herself
to thank.

Against a short incline, just beyond the stricken village, the car
came to a standstill of its own accord, panting brokenly, quivering in
every limb.

"She's red-'ot," said the child, and I believed him.

From the kettle arrangement in the bows came the sound of hot water
singing merrily, while from the spout steam issued hissing. The
tin trunk, in which lurks the clockwork, emitted dense volumes of
petrol-perfumed smoke from every chink. The child climbed across me
and, dropping overboard, opened the l