"Why didn't you wait till you could rig cranks, or whatever they are, on a decent car instead of this ramshackle old piece of antiquity?" he grumbled.
"Sorry, old man," said Templeton; "I'll go a bit slower."
"Besides," Eves went on, "your reversible arrangements don't act. You can't steer the thing straight. It goes like a crab, or a drunk. Swing round again, for goodness' sake. Here's a wagon coming; I don't want to be chucked under the wheels."
"All right," said Templeton, with composure, turning round. "It's only a slight hitch. Of course, the clutch connection is roughly made; I did the best I could with my materials; but you see the idea's all right, and it'll be easy enough to correct the defects."
"You won't think of showing the thing to O'Reilly in its present state?"
"Why not? He's a practical man." Templeton began to get a little warm. "It's chaps like you who know nothing about machinery that lose heart at a trifling setback. And very likely another half-hour's work in the shed will greatly improve things. This is a trial spin; you can't expect everything to go like clockwork first go off."
"Jolly good speech, old man. Best I've heard of yours. My faith in you is restored. By all means run the thing back to the shed; but, if you don't mind, I'll dismount when we come to the lane. I don't mind a shower-bath from above, but from below—no, thank you. I've swallowed enough mud in Flanders."
Templeton spent the rest of the morning in overhauling his mechanism, and Eves in removing the worst of the mud splotches from his clothes. They had just finished lunch, when O'Reilly drove up in a growler hired at the station.
"Faith, 'tis a terrible day for wetness," he said. "But here I am, and I'll be glad now to take a look at your machine. Have you it in working order?"
"We gave it a short trial this morning," said Templeton. "It didn't behave quite so well as I had hoped, but I've spent a couple of hours on it since, and it ought to go better now."