“Can you clean coachwork and brass?” he asked, stooping to unlock the toolbox.
The stableman shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other. The hour was past midnight, and the alarm raised at the hotel had already robbed him of two hours’ sleep.
“Hosses is more in my line,” he answered gruffly.
“But if I give you half a sovereign perhaps you will not mind helping me. I shall attend to the engine myself.”
“’Arf a suv-rin did you say, mister?” came the panting question.
“Yes. Be quick! Off with your coat, and get busy. A man who can groom a horse properly ought to be able to use a rubber and hose.”
By two o’clock the Mercury was shining above and below. Thoroughly weary, yet well satisfied with the day’s record, Medenham went to bed. He was up at seven, and meant to talk severely to Dale after breakfast; then he found, by consulting a directory, that the small hotel where his man had arranged to stay did not possess a telephone. It was annoying, but he had the consolation of knowing that an hour’s slow run would bring him to Hereford and reunite him with his sorely-needed baggage. He was giving a few finishing touches to the car’s toilette, when the Welsh waiting-maid hurried to the garage; Miss Vanrenen wanted him at once.
She awaited him in the veranda of the hotel, which fronted the southeast. A shower of June roses, pink and crimson and white, bespangled the sloping roof and hid the square posts that supported it, and a flood of vivid sunshine irradiated Cynthia as she leaned over the low rail of the balcony and smiled a greeting. She presented a picture that was a triumph of unconscious art, and her beauty affected Medenham more than a deep draught of the strongest wine ever vinted by man. Yesterday she was a charming girl, radiantly good-looking, and likely to attract attention even in circles where pretty women were plentiful as blackberries in a September thicket, but to-day, in Medenham’s eyes, she was a woodland sprite, an ethereal creature cast in no mortal mold. So enthralled was he by the vision that he failed to note her attire. She wore the muslin dress of the previous night, and this, in itself, might have prepared him for what was to come.
“Good-morning, Mr. Fitzroy,” she said, with a fine attempt at re-establishing those friendly relations which might reasonably exist between the owner of a motor-car and its hirer, “how are you after your strenuous labors of yesterday? I have heard all about you. Fancy remaining out of bed till two o’clock! Couldn’t that precious car of yours be cleaned this morning, and by someone else?”
He found his tongue at that.