Carver with a shake
of his head.

"Some of 'em do. Mine isn't that sort. But, you see, my firm is head and
shoulders above the others--in some ways. The Sayers Automobile Company
isn't one of these big, swollen concerns. Old Tom Sayers looks after his
people."

He was in true form again, proud of his firm, boasting its merits,
advertising it and ready to defend it quite as valiantly as if he had
been with it from its beginnings.

"I've heard of it," admitted Carver, politely. "Suppose it's because I'm
so out of the game that I don't know more about it than I do. My fault!
How long you been with 'em?"

"Since about five o'clock this afternoon," said Jimmy.

The crippled record breaker took out his watch, consulted it, and
slipped it back in his pocket.

"Long time, isn't it?" he commented. "That's nearly three hours. I've
broken a few records in my time, but you beat anything I've come across.
It took thirteen years for me to learn that one concern I worked for
was no good. It took you three hours to learn the one you work for is
the best there is."

"But I believe it!" declared Jimmy, with his unquenchable enthusiasm.
"Why? Because I believe in Tom Sayers. I believe in his honesty, and his
reputation, and--well--because he gave me a chance."

"Know him very well?" his seat mate asked.

"Never met him," Jimmy admitted.

"Know anything about his cars?" Carver somewhat cynically asked.

"I know that some of those who have them brag about them," said Jimmy.
"And I know that the men who work for him, from the superintendent down
to the yard boy, believe in them and say so, and would tear to pieces a
man who says they aren't the best. That's good enough for me. Know
anything about cars? Um-m-m-mh! I reckon I don't know a thing on earth
about 'em. If my life depended upon starting a car that somebody had
handed me on a platter, I suppose I'd be a deader. But a man doesn't
have to know it all to succeed. Noah couldn't have started the
_Aquitania_; but he did navigate the ark pretty successfully, and nobody
denies that he was the first admiral that ever sailed the seas. Admiral
Nelson and Commodore Paul Jones got there, somehow, but if they had seen
a motor launch tearing down on them at twenty miles an hour, I can
imagine both of them diving off the poop!"

Before they parted that night, the expert and the novice had become
friends. Before the race meeting was over, Mr. James Gollop knew more
about the merits o