lf go. In other words, the brakes
failed, and I had to run him into the bushes. One lamp and one wing
broken, otherwise unhurt. To adjusting brakes--materials, nil; labour,
three hours at a drink an hour, three pints ale. Oh, rotten, my dear,
rotten!"

I sank into a chair.

"Meanwhile, we've had to entertain the Wilson crowd. I suppose you
forgot they were coming?"

"I was with you in spirit."

"In beer, you mean," said Berry. "Look here, I knew you when you were
seven, before you had put off the white mantle of innocence and assumed
the cloak of depravity. It has been my unhappy lot to be frequently in
your company ever since, and, speaking from a long and distasteful
experience of you and your ways, I am quite satisfied that, if you did
meet with some slight contretemps, you made no whole-hearted effort to
rejoin us in time to degrade your intellect by discussing the sort of
topics which appeal to that genus of hopeless wasters which the Wilsons
adorn."

"Was it very bad?" said I.

"Bad?" said Jonah. "Bad? When a woman with six male children leads
off by telling you that she keeps a book in which she has faithfully
recorded all the amusing sayings of her produce up to the age of seven,
it's pretty bad, isn't it?"

"Not really?"

"Fact," said Berry. "She quoted a lot of them. One of the more nutty
was a contribution from Albert on seeing his father smoking for the
first time. 'Mother, is daddy on fire' Now, that really happened. We
had about half an hour of the book. Jonah asked her why she didn't
publish it, and she nearly kissed him. It was terrible."

"To make things worse," said Jonah, "they brought Baldwin and Arthur
with them, as specimens of what they could do in the child line."

"How awful!" said I

"It was rather trying," said Berry. "But they were all right as soon
as we turned them on to the typewriter."

"What!" I gasped.

"Oh, we had little or no trouble with them after that."

"Quiet as mice," said Jonah.

"Do you know that machine cost me twenty-five pounds?" I cried.

"The jam'll wash off," said Berry. "You don't know how easily jam
comes off. Why, I've known..."

"If I thought you really had turned them on to the typewriter, I should
never forgive you."

"You oughtn't to say a thing like that, even in jest," said Berry; "it
isn't Christian. I tell you for your good."

"Seriously, you didn't do such a wicked thing? Hullo, where is it?"

"They're going t