CHAPTER IV
Larruppin’ Lyndesay, perturbed by the events of the morning, roared down Hillgate at a pace that sent peaceful marketers flying to the pavement. Dixon of Dockerneuk, coming up leisurely, watched him and smiled—for there was a dog.
The grip of the brakes swung the car close upon Jordan’s plate-glass, and several people thought they were killed, but the dog was spared; and Dixon smiled grimly a second time, both at Larry’s face and at a certain recollection. When the car pulled up beside him, he could see that the young man’s hands were shaking.
The chauffeur, exchanging a friendly wink of much understanding, sprang out and gave him his place beside his master. Dixon mounted after a brief greeting.
“You’ll be goin’ out, I suppose?” Larrupper said, moving on. “You’d better let me take you. I’m needin’ your moral support badly, Dock, old man. And I got a devil of a fright at that corner—you saw it, I expect? The dog had a silver brush to it. It reminded me——” He glanced sideways at his companion—“Sorry, old chap!”
“Lord, Dock!” he went on, presently, “if you knew what a time I’ve had, these last three years, keepin’ out of the way of things with a tail at one end and a bark at the other! I dream of them at nights. There’s times I think I’ll have to quit motorin’, an’ take to a tricycle. I’ve been punished, Dock, if it’s any comfort to you to know it.”
“Well, well,” Dixon answered thoughtfully and with admirable serenity, seeing that they were full speed on the track of a carrier’s cart which was occupying the whole of the road—“if it’s learned you to think on a bit before turning a corner, it happen wasn’t all wasted. You’re one that takes a deal of learning that way, Mr. Lionel!”
Larry chuckled, and then sighed. He did not like to think of that incident of three years ago. He had been fresh home from Eton, a hasty snatch at college and a wild rush round the world, and he had known nothing of Dixon in those days, or of all the things of the North that Dixon so adequately represented; but in one sharp lesson he had learned much, and at a price.
Dixon, too, went back in mind. It was not his way to dwell overmuch on the past; he took things as they came, ordinarily—one day with another—but he had had other memories stirred, that morning, and he was looking back in spite of himself. As the car whizzed down the white road, the two men saw the same scenes re-enacted before them.