"I don't know where the fly is."
"Your trousers are awfully torn."
"Be silent, please. I am dazed."
He remains dazed when at last they begin to trudge home, the wrecked tricycle left for a cart. But at the top of the hill that plunged them to disaster, the infectious spurts of laughter at his side challenge his self-esteem and he sets out to sound his reputation in Percival's regard.
"I think I steered rather well, considering I couldn't see."
Percival is always generous: "Splendidly! Oh, dear, I'm aching with laughing!"
"I was only afraid for you, Percival."
"We whizzed, you know! We simply whizzed!"
Mr. Purdie glances back down the hill and shudders to have whizzed it. "Were you laughing all the way down?"
"Anybody would laugh at a whizz like that."