Jean burst into helpless laughter as the wagonette again overtook them. The driver flourished his whip and the horse broke into a canter—it looked like derision.
There was a long silence—then Jean said:
"If it won't go, it's too big to move. We shall have to train ivy on it and make it a feature of the landscape."
"Or else," said David, savagely and irreverently—"or else hew it in pieces before the Lord."
Stark got up and straightened himself, wiped his hands and his forehead, and came up to David.
"I've found out what's wrong," he said. "She'll manage to Moffat, but we'll have to get her put right there. It's…." He went into technical details incomprehensible to Jean.
They got back into the car and it sprang away as if suddenly endowed with new life. In a trice they had passed the wagonette, leaving it in a whirl of scornful dust. They ate the miles as a giant devours sheep. They passed the Devil's Beef Tub—Jock would have liked to tarry there and investigate, but Jean dared not ask Stark to stop in case they could not start again—and soon went sliding down the hill to Moffat. Hot puffs of scented air rose from the valley, they had left the moorlands and the winds, and the town was holding out arms to welcome them. They drove along the sunny, sleepy, midday High Street and stopped at a hotel.
Except David, no member of the Jardine family had ever been inside a hotel, and it was quite an adventure for them to go up the steps from the street, enter the swinging doors, and ask a polite woman with elaborately done hair if they might have luncheon. Yes, they might, and Peter, at present held tightly in Mhor's arms, could be fed in the kitchen if that would suit.
Stark had meantime taken the car to a motor-repairing place.
It was half-past three before the car came swooping up to the hotel doors. Jean gazed at it with a sort of fearful pride. It looked very well if only it didn't play them false. Stark, too, looked well—a fine, impassive figure.