Then they consulted.
"You can't get him out of London without telling him where you are taking him to," said Pugeot. "He'll kick the car over on the road if he's anything like what he was last night. Leave it to me and I'll do the trick. But the question is, where shall we take him? There's no use going to a place like Brighton; too many attractions for him. A moated grange is what he wants, and even then he'll be tumbling into the moat."
"I know of a place," said Bobby, "down at Upton-on-Hill. A girl told me of it; it's the Rose Hotel."
"I know it," said Pugeot; "couldn't be better. I have a cousin there living at a place called The Nook. There's a bowling-green at the hotel and a golf-course near. Can't hurt himself. Leave it all to me."
He told Higgs to telephone for the car, and then they sat and smoked whilst Pugeot showed Bobby just the way to deal with people of Uncle Simon's description.
"It's all nonsense, that doctor man's talk," said Pugeot. "The poor old chap has shed a nut or two. I ought to know something about it for I've had the same bother in my family. Got his youth back—pish! Cracked, that's the real name for it. I've seen it. I've seen my own uncle, when he was seventy, get his youth back—and the last time I saw him he was pulling a toy elephant along with a string. He'd got a taste also for playing with matches. Is that the car, Higgs? Well, come along, and let's try the power of a little gentle persuasion."
Simon was finishing breakfast when they arrived, assisted by Madame and Cerise. Poor Monsieur Pattigrew did not seem in the least in the need of pity either, though the women hung about him as women hang about an invalid. He was talking and laughing, and he greeted the newcomers as good companions who had just turned up. His geniality was not to be denied, and it struck Bobby, in a weird sort of manner, that Uncle Simon like this was a much pleasanter person than the old original article. Like this: that is to say, for a moment out of danger from the vicious grinding wheels of a city that destroys butterflies and a society that requests respectable old solicitors to remain respectable old solicitors.
Then, the women having discreetly retired for a while, Pugeot began his gentle persuasion.
Uncle Simon, with visions of yesterday's rural pleasures in his mind, required no persuasion, and he would come for a run into the country with pleasure; but Pugeot was not taking that sort of thing on any more. He was gay, but a very little of that sort of gaiety sufficed him for a long time.