The engineer obeyed with alacrity. I heard him volunteer the fact that he had a brother an artificer in the Navy.
“They couple very well, those two,” said Pyecroft critically, while Hinchcliffe sniffed round the asbestos-lagged boiler and turned on gay jets of steam.
“Now take me up the road,” he said. My man, for form’s sake, looked at me.
“Yes, take him,” I said. “He’s all right.”
“No, I’m not,” said Hinchcliffe of a sudden—“not if I’m expected to judge my water out of a little shaving-glass.”
The water-gauge of that steam-car was reflected on a mirror to the right of the dashboard. I also had found it inconvenient.
“Throw up your arm and look at the gauge under your armpit. Only mind how you steer while you’re doing it, or you’ll get ditched!” I cried, as the car ran down the road.
“I wonder!” said Pyecroft, musing. “But, after all, it’s your steamin’ gadgets he’s usin’ for his libretto, as you might put it. He said to me after breakfast only this mornin’ ’ow he thanked his Maker, on all fours, that he wouldn’t see nor smell nor thumb a runnin’ bulgine till the nineteenth prox. Now look at him! Only look at ’im!”
We could see, down the long slope of the road, my driver surrendering his seat to Hinchcliffe, while the car flickered generously from hedge to hedge.
“What happens if he upsets?”