“Oh, yes, Sir. I can drive any sort of car and mess about with their insides. I always was keen.”
“You’ve been keen on a good many things if I remember right, but not always proficient. All my sons have been to Oxford.”
“But think what a lot it ’ud cost you, Sir, to send me.”
“I expect it ’ud cost me nearly as much to make an engineer of you.”
“Oh, no, Sir—you’ll only have to plank down about a hundred to start with, and in time they’ll pay me some sort of a screw. And if I go into a shop at Ashford I can live at home and cost you nothing.”
“You think you’ll cost nothing to keep at home? What ull you live on, you damned fool?”
“Oh, relatively I meant, Sir. And if I get, say, fifteen bob a week, as I shall in time....”
“It’ll be a proud day for me, of course.”
“Things have changed since the war, and lots of chaps who’d have gone up to the ’Varsity now go straight into works—there’s Hugh’s friend, Tom Daubernon, opened a garage at Colchester....”
“That will be your ambition in life—to open a garage?”