"Yes."
"I'm just going there. There's something the matter with the car—apart from the scratch on the door, which is your fault—and Taplow's a bit of a car expert.... Where are you going?"
"Only to post a few letters."
"Up to the cross-roads? ... Jump in, and I'll drive you up; then afterwards we'll go back to the hotel together. I can turn the car at the next corner."
"Sure it won't be too much trouble?"
"I shouldn't offer, if it were. I've just come over from Petersfield—had quite an exciting drive. Falling tree missed me by inches near Liphook, and I nearly ran over another man just before I met you.... But there was some excuse for him—he was drunk."
I got in the car and in a couple of minutes we were speeding up the hill at thirty miles an hour. We chatted desultorily during the short run, but all I remember is that when we were nearing the summit she suddenly cried out: "Ah, there he is—the man I nearly ran into.... Why doesn't somebody take him home, I wonder?" And she pointed ahead to a man who was staggering drunkenly along the middle of the road towards us.
I shouted: "Good God, it's Terry!"—and nearly, in my astonishment, jumped out of the car. She braked sharply to a standstill, and nothing, I think, was ever so typical of her as the calm way in which she did everything and said everything then. "Terry?" she echoed, and then added: "Oh, yes, I know about him. We'd better tell him to get in, hadn't we?"
She left the car and came with me, and in the end it was she herself who made the arrangements. She didn't wait for me to introduce her; as soon as we were barely within speaking distance she said: "You're Terry, aren't you? I remember you years ago—you used to do chemistry experiments in our kitchen at Hampstead.... But I don't suppose you know who I am."
He wasn't too drunk to answer; the drink had, in fact, rid him of his usual shyness at meeting a stranger. "I know who you are," he said, with a sort of truculent facetiousness. "You're the young lady who nearly ran me down just now, aren't you?"