She seemed considerably staggered. “Do you mean this? Really? You an engineer?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you mind?” It was rather cheeky.
Then she found her husband for me, a fluffy, enthusiastic young man, weary and dirty with long wrestling with that car’s interior. I went with him to the shed and looked it over.
There was perhaps one teaspoonful of petrol in the tank. I pointed out to him that petrol cars went better when petrol was used. We then filled up the tank and started. I think I never saw anyone so absolutely abject. What he wanted to do, and did not dare to do, was to ask me not to reveal the nature of the trouble to the firm when I got back. He needn’t have minded. To the firm it was all in the day’s work. And the curious thing was that the young man was by no means a fool in mechanical matters; it was simply that he had not happened to think of the petrol.
I got along very well now. I might have saved myself a good deal of trouble if I had started on this business at once. I was now making an income which justified me, I thought, in removing from my little flat to something better and nearer to the middle of civilisation. It was Minnie Saxe who decided it for me. She lingered one morning after she had brought my breakfast; not lachrymose—for she never wept—but stern and depressed.
“I am afraid I shall have to leave you, miss,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, father’s broken down again. These last three weeks he’s brought back his money a shilling short, and great paper bags of almond-rock in his pocket. Nothing I can say seems to be able to save him.”
I did not smile outwardly. “Well, what are you going to do about it, Minnie?”
“I am going to do what I ought to have done long ago. He’s got a bit of money put by, and I know where there’s a good opening. I’m going into the sweets and general.”