"What's gone amiss, Scip?" said his friend, William Rufus.
"That idiot Rossier...."
"I told you he was a fool. What's he done now?"
"Left the machine in a ditch, and walked home through the mud.... Oh no, he hasn't hurt himself. I wish he had—in moderation." The public becomes interested, and explanation spreads over the room. A lady's voice says, afar, that its owner supposes now we shall lose our excursion, and that place will be gone, and it would have been the very thing. Challis doesn't understand this, and asks Judith the meaning. He is in her neighbourhood somehow—seems to have sacrificed hearing more about the accident. She supposes Sibyl meant the place for the Great Idea. But they couldn't have gone to-morrow unless the weather mended, anyhow.
People chatter so in a room full; you soon lose threads of conversation. Challis knew little more about either the accident or the Great Idea when he went away to dress for dinner an hour later. He was only aware that Mr. Tomes was still at work on the Reciprocal Interdependent Taxation of Imports, and that Miss Arkroyd was going to play Halma with him if he came up soon enough after dinner.
In his letter to Marianne, written after he went up to his room rather early—people are very apt to think it's getting on for bedtime after rain-beleaguered days in country-houses—Mr. Challis merely mentioned two games at Halma, and adduced the exciting character of that game as a reason why very little was said. His letter implied that he was being bored, which was untrue. However, the words "in the house all day" would do that without an antidote. And we couldn't expect him to mention the soul-brush, especially as he disallowed its existence. He said a good deal of what he did know of the motor-car mishap, which was natural, for—so he said—he had inferred, from the excitement on the subject, that this car, when it appeared, would be the first ever seen by most of the inhabitants of the district.
This machine was the latest extravagance of young Lord Felixthorpe, who had spent a thousand pounds upon it; and its arrival from the agent at Grime, who was to welcome it—or rather its components—to England, and to qualify it for the enjoyment of its riders, and the execrations of its victims, was looked forward to with feverish anxiety by both. But he could not give such details as were supplied next day, after a fuller sifting of Louis Rossier's report, which was not very intelligible at first. These had to wait for a postscript, which told how the chauffeur, who did not understand three words of English, had proved as sensitive to misdirection as the compass is to the magnetic current. He went the wrong way instinctively several times, and was headed back, or finger-pointed back, just as often. In the end he made an unfortunate choice between two roads, although warned by a long shouted instruction from a turnipfield—which ignored his nationality robustly—that the cross-over bridge, when he come to Sto'an's mill, nigh the running wa'ater, wasn't to be troosted to carry lo'ads; and the shouter would be rather shoy of it, in yower place. But you might take e'er a one of they two ways, at your liking. Being none the wiser, Louis Rossier chose the more tempting one; and when he came to the cross-over bridge, which spanned a ditch, could not, of course, tell the meaning of the Local Authority's posted caution to the effect that nothing over two tons was to use it; with the result that it gave way in the middle. It was too small a bridge to let any vehicle larger than a goat-chaise through and almost too small a ditch to accommodate one, but the motor was trapped and detained in its sunk centre.
"You'll have to get to t' Hall on Sha'anks's mear, yoong ma-an," said a native, who was not really taking pains to hide his joy at the mishap. Louis got to the Hall, but didn't know he had ridden Shanks's mare.
However, for a first accident with a new Panhard, it wasn't so bad! Only one tyre ruined; its comrade was mendable. In the end the gorgeous scarlet vehicle was got to the house by horses, and was recovering its spirits and snorting, with the new spare tyre on, by the time the company at the Hall had eaten too much lunch, and were arranging how they would spend their afternoon. Challis had despatched his letter of the previous night, and was enjoying himself. A gloriously fine day, following an isolated local depression of the barometer, had removed the local depressions the latter had occasioned to everyone else, and Miss Arkroyd had ended a second interview over the parroquets by promising to take him to see the Roman and British camps on the other side of the village.