“This one ’ere belongs to Saunders, down in the town. ’E lets it out sometimes,” replied Gibbs, indicating the red car he had been cleaning.
“Then I’ll have it—and you’ll drive me, eh? We must overtake them.”
“Very good, sir,” replied the man, and then I returned to the hotel to telephone to the owner and fix the price.
Gibbs quickly filled the tank with petrol, poured water into the radiator, examined the tyres, pumping one that he found a little down; then he washed himself, put on his leather jacket and cap, and mounted to the wheel.
A quarter of an hour after I had first entered the garage I was sitting at the chauffeur’s side as the car slowly made its way up the crooked quaint old-fashioned main street of Swanage and out on the big white road that ran up hill and down valley, the picturesque highway to Dorchester. Up to Corfe Castle the way was nearly all uphill, but the “Fiat” ran splendidly, and in the narrow winding road where we met many pleasure parties in chars-à-banc Gibbs quickly showed himself a competent driver.
Seldom he blew his horn, yet he handled the car with a care that at once convinced me that he was a reliable chauffeur.
As we skirted the great mound upon which stood the cyclopean walls of Corfe, magnificent relics of the bygone feudal age, and ran again out of the little village and up on to Purbeck Hill, he handed me a pair of goggles, saying:—
“You’d better have these, sir. We’re going through a lot of dust presently, and we’ve a dead head-wind.”
I put them on, and as I did so he increased the speed, remarking:—
“Fortunately, there ain’t any police traps ’ere. We aren’t like they are in Surrey. I got fined a fiver at Guildford a month ago, an’ I was only goin’ fourteen miles an ’our. But it ain’t any good defendin’. The police are always in the right,” he added, with a sigh.