"Your servants thought you might need me, sir," explained the man, "so I came after you. It's a scorcher of a road for the first mile, but the rest isn't so bad, if it keeps in the same condition."
Now, what had actually happened was this. The chauffeur had reached the Grange about twenty minutes after Armathwaite's departure. At that moment Smith was chaining and padlocking the gate, but Betty heard the snorting of the car, and came to find out its cause.
When the chauffeur told her that he was there in response to an order, the quick-witted girl told him to hurry up the moor road. He looked at it, and grinned.
"What! Take a valuable machine over a track like that! Not me!" he said.
"Can't it go there?" she inquired.
"It can go anywhere, for that matter."
"Are you afraid, then?"
"Afraid of what? D'ye think I want to twist an axle or smash a wheel?"
Then one of the laboring men joined in.
"I reckon you don't know t' maister," he said. "He wouldn't care a pin if you smashed yourself, but you've got to obey orders. He's one of the sort who has his own way. Good pay, no beer, an' hard work is his motter. It is, an' all."