"Filthy road-hog!" bellowed the gentleman at the wheel; and Philip went on his way.
The gentleman turned to his daughter.
"Now, let's have no more nonsense about Adams," he said. "I admit he had a wife and four children, but you can hardly hold me responsible for that. Moreover, he was a yahoo. He decorated the interior of the garage—my garage—with chromolithographs, and his wife kept wax fruit under a glass case in her parlour window. I have dismissed him, and there is an end of it. Let us cease to be sentimental or maudlin upon the subject."
"You might have given him a character," said the girl.
"If I had," replied her father grimly, "he would never have obtained a situation again."
The girl changed the subject.
"Don't you think," she said, "that if we are really going to call on the Easts, we had better be getting on? And go gently. The foot-brake is a good deal worn, and the side-brake won't hold this heavy car if it gets on the run down this hill."
"If there is one thing," replied her amiable papa, "about this miserable and untrustworthy vehicle which can be relied upon at all, it is the efficiency of the brakes."
They set off with a jerk.