"Owing a little to your automobile too, maybe," said I. "By the way, what is its state of health?"
"There has been no room for the automobile in my thoughts," said the Prince, with a cooled-down step-fatherly smile. "But I have no doubt it will be in good marching order by the time it is wanted, as my chauffeur was to rise at four, knock up a mechanic at some shop in the village, and make the new change-speed lever which was broken yesterday. If you are determined to leave me so soon, I will console myself by finding Joseph and seeing how he is getting on."
We walked together towards the house, which had opened several of its green eyelids now, and at the mouth of a sort of stucco tunnel which led to the door there was Joseph himself—a piteous, dishevelled Joseph, looking as if birds had built nests on him and spiders had woven webs round him for years.
"Well," exclaimed the Prince with the air of one warding off a blow. "What has happened? Have you burnt my automobile, or are you always like this when you get up early?"
"I am not an incendiary, Your Highness," said Joseph, in his precise French, which it's easy to understand, because when he wishes to be dignified he speaks slowly. "I do not know what I am like, unless it is a wreck, in which case I resemble your automobile. As you left her last night, so she is now, and so she is likely to remain, unless the gentlemen of the other car will have the beneficence to pull her up a still further and more violent hill to the village of Tenda. There finds himself the only mechanic within fifty miles."
"I engaged you as a mechanic!" cried the Prince
.
"But not as a workshop, Your Highness. That I am not and shall not be this side of Paradise. And it is a workshop that we must have."
"Do not let me keep you, Miss Beechy," said the Prince, "if you wish to go to your Mamma. This little difficulty will arrange itself."
I adore rows, and I should have liked to stay; but I couldn't think of any excuse, so I skipped into the house, and almost telescoped (as they say of railroad trains) with the nice monk, who was talking to Maida in the hall.