Here was a nice thing, he thought, to happen to a man whose one aim was to be unnoticed. It was fortunate that the noise drowned what he was saying, for so Sally hadn’t the shock of hearing him break his recent promise; and, much surprised at the conduct of the horn, she was shaken out of her usual prudent silence and was moved to draw Jocelyn’s attention to its behaviour by remarking, on one of his flying visits to the steering wheel, that it wasn’t half hollering.
‘Oh, shut up!’ cried Jocelyn, beside himself; and who knows whether he meant Sally or the horn?
Sally took it that he was addressing the horn, and observed sympathetically that it didn’t seem to want to.
‘If only I had a small screwdriver!’ cried Jocelyn, frantically throwing out the contents of his tool-box in search of what wasn’t there. ‘I don’t seem to have a small screwdriver—a small screwdriver—has anybody got a small screwdriver?’
The ferryman had no screwdriver, big or small, and the driver of the charabanc, descended from his place to come and look on, had none small enough; while as for the passengers, now all standing on their seats and craning their necks, nothing was to be expected of them except absorption in Sally.
‘Scissors would do—scissors, scissors!’ cried Jocelyn, who felt that if the horn didn’t stop he would go mad.
Nobody had any scissors except Sally, who got on her feet quickly and delightedly, because now she could help—the heads craned more than ever—and said she had a pair at the bottom of her trunk.
‘No, no,’ said Jocelyn, unable even for the sake of perhaps stopping the horn to face uncording and unpacking before the whole ferry that terrible tin trunk of hers. ‘Sit still, Sally——’
And he began to hit whatever part seemed nearest to the noise with his clenched fist.
‘That won’t do no good,’ said the driver of the charabanc, grinning.