"Then the door opened again. Out marched Grandmother, with the skeleton slung over her shoulder. The head was hanging down her back, and she had the legs in her hand.
"One poor old man, who must have been eighty, spilled a pint beer-glass straight into Miss Partridge's lap. Grandmother never stopped or looked round. She marched straight out to the brougham, sat the skeleton up in the seat like a passenger, and told me to get in.
"That's where the fireworks really started. As I was getting in, I looked round. In the middle of the road, about thirty feet behind us — well, there was Sir Henry.
"His eyes were bulging out behind his spectacles, and his whole corporation was shivering like a mountain. I can't reproduce the tone, and, anyway, nobody could reproduce the volume, of what he said.
"He said: 'You stole my skeleton.' Then he turned round to the people in the door, who'd crowded out with their glasses in their hands, and said: 'Boys, that goddam hobgoblin stole my skeleton.' By this time we were off to a flying start
"There wasn't any motor-car outside the Dragon at all. Only a lot of bicycles, and a farm-cart with Will Harnaby's horse. H.M. was so mad he really and literally couldn't see straight and he fell all over the farm-cart when he tried to get up. But he did get there, and he did grab the reins and whip, and off we all went
"Grandmother was bending tensely over the steering-lever, putting on every ounce of speed; and Sir Henry was standing up and whirling the whip round his head like a charioteer in Ben-Hur. Only, you see, that electric car couldn't possibly do twenty miles an hour. And Will Harnaby's horse couldn't do fifteen.
That's where—" Jenny faltered a little—"Grandmother gave me the instructions. She said, with that smile of hers, I was to stick the skeleton's head out of the side-window so it faced H.M. And I was to move the lower jaw up and down as if the skeleton gibbered at him.
"Well, I did. I made the skeleton stick its head out and gibber about every twenty yards. And, every time the skeleton gibbered at him, his face got more purple, and his language was awful. Truly awful. I never heard anything, even in the Navy, that could…"
Jenny stopped. "Martin!" she said, in an attempt at reproachfulness which broke down completely.