Tommy shook his head affirmatively.
“Well,” said Miss Margaret, “you must quite understand that if we go on you are to be good. If you are naughty again I shall turn Jimmy round and drive home at once.”
Unfortunately Tommy was used to threats that were seldom carried out. The policeman would come for him, Mammy said, when he was naughty, and, although he had often been really quite naughty, still the policeman had not come. At other times he was told that he would be sent to London to live with the monkeys in the Zoo. At first this possibility had filled him with dread, but now familiarity had blunted the sharp edge of fear.
Something in Miss Margaret’s manner, however, warned him that hers was not an idle speech, and he decided that he must be really careful for the rest of the drive.
A little farther on, down the same hilly part of the main road, a lady approached them. “Have you just come through a village?” she asked, as they were passing by.
They had noticed on the right, down a side road, a few scattered houses, but scarcely thought it could be called a village.
“Had it any shops or a garage?” she asked again, and seemed disheartened when they told her that there were no shops nearer than Draeth, five miles away.
Afterwards they understood her anxiety, for right in the middle of the roadway stood a big, immovable motor. Two men were crawling under its body, and Miss Margaret had to call out sharply to one of them to withdraw his feet before she could drive Jimmy and the gingle past.
At Polderry it was decided that the very first thing to do was to eat the lunch that Mrs. Tregennis had packed in the big round basket.