“I thought you said he was a doctor.”
“That’s just it. He thinks that no one will believe in him any more now that he’s doctored his own wrist all wrong. That’s what makes him depressed. I told him not to mind; but he does.”
“The best doctors make mistakes sometimes,” said Geoffrey.
“Everybody does,” said the girl. “Even competent mechanics aren’t always quite sure about things, are they? Now you see why I don’t want to send out Jones if I can possibly help it.”
“But you can’t possibly help it,” said Geoffrey.
He wondered whether he could offer to pay Jones’ bill himself. It would not, he supposed, be very large, and he would have been glad to pay it to save the girl from trouble. But he did not like to make the offer.
“We might,” he said, “persuade Jones not; to send in his bill till your father’s wrist is better. Anyhow, there’s nothing for it but to get him. We’ll just push your car to the side of the road out of the way and then I’ll run you into Hamley.”
The car was pushed well over to the side of the road, and left on a patch of grass. Geoffrey shoved hard at the spokes of one of the back wheels. The girl pushed, with one hand on a lamp bracket. She steered with the other, and added a good deal to Geoffrey’s labour by turning the wheel the wrong way occasionally.
The drive to Hamley did not take long; but it was nearly half-past six before they reached the village street. Jones’s shop and motor garage were shut up for the night; but a kindly bystander told Geoffrey where the man lived. Unfortunately, the man was not at home. His wife, who seemed somewhat aggrieved at his absence, gave it as her opinion that he was likely to be found in the George Inn.
“But it isn’t no use your going there for him,” she said. “There’s a Freemason’s dinner tonight, and Jones wouldn’t leave that, not if you offered him a ten-pound note.”