“Go ahead,” I said encouragingly, as my young friend merely continued to regard the wheel with a mixture of embarrassment and malevolence. “I want to see how these things are put on.”
“It’s quite easy,” said Andy desperately. “You just hold it up against the wheel and clamp it on.”
“Then do it,” said I.
“Yes, do it!” said my loyal daughter ferociously. With me she was determined not to spare the malefactor.
A quarter of an hour later we brought out the pump, and I once more inflated the leaky tyre, while Andy endeavoured to replace the Stepney wheel in its original resting-place beside the driver’s seat. Even now the tale of his incompetence was not complete.
“This blamed Stepney won’t go back into its place,” he said plaintively. “I fancy one of the clip things must have dropped off. It’s rather an old-fashioned pattern, this of yours. I think we had better carry it back loose. After all,” he added almost tearfully, evading my daughter’s stony eye, “it doesn’t matter how you carry the thing, so long——”
He withered and collapsed. Ultimately we drove home with The Gruffin wearing the Stepney wheel round her waist, lifebuoy fashion. On reaching home I sent for Mr. Gootch to come and take Bill Bailey away and put him into a state of efficiency. Then I explained to Andy, during a most consoling ten minutes, exactly what I thought of him as a mechanic, a chauffeur, and a fellow-creature.
III
THE PASSING OF “BILL BAILEY”
It is a favourite maxim of my wife’s that any woman can manage any man, provided she takes the trouble to thoroughly understand him. (The italics and split infinitive are hers.) This formula, I soon found, is capable of extension to the relations existing between a motor-car and its owners. Bill Bailey and I soon got to understand one another thoroughly. He was possessed of what can only be described as an impish temperament. He seemed to know by instinct what particular idiosyncrasy of his would prove most exasperating at a given moment, and he varied his répertoire accordingly. On the other hand, he never wasted his energies upon an unprofitable occasion. For instance, he soon discovered that I had not the slightest objection to his back-firing in a quiet country road. Consequently he reserved that stunning performance for a crowded street full of nervous horses. He nearly always broke down when I took critical or expert friends for an outing; and the only occasions which ever roused him to high speed were those upon which I was driving alone, having dispatched the rest of the family by train to ensure their safe arrival.
Gradually I acquired a familiarity with most of the complaints from which Bill Bailey suffered—and their name was legion, for they were many—together with the symptoms which heralded their respective recurrences. In this connection I should like to set down, for the benefit of those who may at any time find themselves in a similar position, a few of the commonest causes of cessation of activity in a motor-car, gradual or instantaneous, temporary or permanent:—