“Do I understand that you are so dead to all decency of feeling as to endanger your only sister’s life as well as your own?” said Maurice severely.
“There’s no risk at all,” replied George; “that is, no more than in an ordinary motor. It was simply a piece of rotten bad luck. The gyroscopes are all right, but there’s a terrific amount of side thrust in turning a corner, and they’ve watered the road recently, so that in making allowance for the possibility of skidding——”
“Pray don’t treat me to a lecture on mechanics. The accident, as I conceive it, was the fault of your making an ass of yourself.”
“Here we are,” said Sheila, before George could answer, as the fly drew up at the gate of a large house. “We’ve got a lovely lawn, Maurice; I hope you’ve brought your tennis racquet.”
“My dear child, we have left the dark ages behind,” replied her brother acidly, and the two others, as they followed him into the house, felt that Maurice was even more insufferable than when he first put on high collars.
This impression was deepened at the dinner-table. The Honourable Mrs. Courtenay-Greene was a dowager of severe and wintry aspect, who wore pince-nez and had the habit of “looking down her nose,” as George irreverently put it. During dinner she and Maurice exchanged notes about common acquaintances, ignoring George until a chance mention of the gyro-car drew upon him a battery of satire, reproof, and condemnation.
“I shudder for our reputation,” said the lady. “We are already, I am sure, the talk of the neighbourhood.”
“Judging by what I have seen,” said Maurice, “we shall be lucky if we are not more than the talk. It will be manslaughter, at the least.”
“And our name will be in the papers!” said Mrs. Courtenay-Greene. “I live in a constant state of nervous terror. A motor accident on the road is disgraceful enough, but George is actually talking of running his ridiculous machine on the river.”
“Well, Aunt,” began George, but the lady closed her eyes and waved her hands as though warding off something ineffably contaminating.