Meanwhile, along a road running almost parallel with Philip's and ultimately converging on Wickmore Hill itself, came another car. It was a Britannia, of a four-year-old pattern. It was driven by a gentleman with a yellow beard, into which streaks of grey had made their way. Beside him sat a girl. The gentleman, her father, had just completed a sulphurous summary of the character of the man who had designed the carburettor of the car—not because of any inherent defect in the carburettor itself, but because the gentleman, for a variety of reasons, the most cogent of which was an entire ignorance of the elements of motor mechanics, had twice stopped his engine in the course of five miles.
Presently they emerged from the side road on to the summit of Wickmore Hill. The gentleman stopped the car by a fierce application of the brakes.
"I shall write to the band of brigands who sold me this condemned tumbril," he announced, "and ask for my money back."
"Considering that we have had the car for nearly four years now," remarked his daughter calmly, "won't they think we have been rather a long time making up our minds about it?"
"Don't be ridiculous! How could I detect the fault when I had never driven the car myself until to-day?" snapped the car's owner.
"I should think," said the girl, "that if there had been a fault Adams would have noticed it."
This apparently harmless observation roused quite a tempest.
"Adams? That numskull! That bumpkin! Haven't I been compelled to dismiss Adams from my service for gross incompetence only yesterday? How would he be likely to notice faults in a car?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," was the unruffled reply, "except that he was a trained mechanic and a good driver."
At this moment a Gabriel horn fluted melodiously in the distance. Philip was coming up behind them, climbing the hill at thirty miles an hour. Seeing a car in front of him at a standstill, he slowed down punctiliously and glanced in an enquiring fashion at its occupants as he slid past.