retter to the requisite pitch of hilarity, Andy was on the point of resuming operations with the starting-handle, when I drew his attention to a small stud-like affair sliding across a groove in the dash-board.

'I think," I remarked, "that that is the only thing on the car which you haven't fiddled with as yet. Supposing I push it across?"

Andy, I was pleased to observe, betrayed distinct signs of confusion. Recovering quickly, he protested that the condemned thing was of no particular use, but I could push it across if I liked.

I did so. Next moment, after three deafening but encouraging back-fires, Bill Bailey's engine came to life with a roar, and the car proceeded rapidly backwards down the road, Andy, threaded through the spare wheel like a camel in a needle's eye, slapping down pedals with one hand and clutching at the steering-gear with the other.

"Who left the reverse in?" he panted, when the car had at length been brought to a standstill and the engine stopped.

No explanation was forthcoming, but I observed the scared and flushed countenance of my daughter peering apprehensively round the coach-house door, and drew my own conclusions.

Since Bill Bailey was obviously prepared to atone for past inertia by frenzied activity, our trial trip now came within the sphere of possibility. My wife had by this time removed

her bonnet, and flatly declined to accompany us, alleging somewhat unkindly that she was expecting friends to tennis at the end of the week. The Gruffin, however, would not be parted from us, and presently Bill Bailey, with an enthusiastic but incompetent chauffeur at the wheel, an apprehensive proprietor holding on beside him, and a touzled long-legged hoyden of twelve clinging grimly to the spiderseat behind, clanked majestically out of the garden gate and breasted the slope leading to the main road.

Victory at last! This was life! This was joy! I leaned back and took a full breath. The Gruffin, protruding her unkempt head between mine and Andy's, shrieked out a hope that we might encounter a load of hay en route. so lucky, she said. not disappointed.

It was

She was

From the outset it was obvious that the money expended upon the fanfare horn had been thrown away. No fanfare could have advertised Bill Bailey's approach more efficaciously than Bill himself. He was his own trumpeter. Whenever we passed a roadside cottage we found frantic mothers garnering stray children into doorways, what time the fauna of the district hastily took refuge in ditches or behind hedges.

Still, all went well, as they say in reporting railway disasters, until we had travelled about four miles, when the near-side front wheel settled down with a gentle sigh upon its rim, and the tyre assumed

a plane instead of a cylindrical surface. Ten minutes' strenuous work with a pump restored it to its former rotundity, and off we went again at what can only be described as a rattling pace.

After another mile or so I decided to take the helm myself, not because I thought I could drive the car well, but because I could not conceive how any one could drive it worse than Andy.

I was wrong.

Still, loads of hay are proverbially soft; and since the driver of this one continued to slumber stertorously upon its summit even after the shock of impact, we decided not to summon a fellow-creature from dreamland for the express purpose of distressing him with unpleasant tidings on the subject of the paint on his tailboard. So, cutting loose from the wreck, we silently stole away, if the reader will pardon the expression.

It must have been about twenty minutes later, I fancy, that the gear-box fell off. Personally I should never have noticed our bereavement, for the din indigenous to Bill Bailey's ordinary progress was quite sufficient to allow a margin for such extra items of disturbance as the sudden exposure of the gear wheels. A few jets of a black and glutinous compound, which I afterwards learned to recognise as gear oil, began to spout up through cracks in the flooring, but that was all. It was The Gruffin who, from her retrospective coign of vantage in the

spider-seat, raised the alarm of a heavy metallic body overboard. We stopped the car, and the gear-box was discovered in a disintegrated condition a few hundred yards back; but as none of us was capable of restoring it to its original position, and as Bill Bailey appeared perfectly prepared to do without it altogether, we decided to go on in statu quo.

The journey, I rejoice to say, was destined not to conclude without witnessing the final humiliation and exposure of Andy Finch. We had pumped up the leaky tyre three times in about seven miles, when Andy, struck by a brilliant idea, exclaimed

"What mugs we are! What is the good of a Stepney wheel if you don't use it?"

A trifle ashamed of our want of resource, we laboriously detached the Stepney from its moorings and trundled it round to the proper side of the car. I leaned it up against its future partner and then stepped back and waited. So did Andy. The Gruffin, anxious to learn, edged up and did the same.

There was a long pause.

"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

Bill

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 owner. 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 despatched the rest of the family by train to ensure their safe arrival.

Gradually I I acquired a familiarity with most of the complaints from which Bill Bailey suffered — and and their name was legion, for they were many together with the symptoms which heralded their

A. Breakdowns on the part of the engine. These may be due to(1) Absence of petrol. (Usually discovered after the entire car has been dismantled.)

(2) Presence of a foreign body. E.g., a Teddy Bear in the waterpump. (How it got there I cannot imagine. The animal was a present from the superstitious Gruffin, and in the role of Mascot adorned the summit of the radiator. It must have felt dusty dusty or thirsty, and dropped in one day when the cap was off.) (3) Things in their wrong places. E.g., water in the petrol - tank and petrol in the watertank. This occurred on the solitary occasion upon which I entrusted The Gruffin with the preparation of the car for an afternoon's run. (4) Loss of some essential portion of the mechanism. (E.g., the carburetter.) A minute examination

of the

road for a few hundred

yards back will usually restore it.

B. Intermediate troubles. By this I mean troubles connected with the complicated apparatus which harnesses the engine to the car-the clutch, the gears, the driving - shaft, &c. Of these it is sufficient to speak briefly. (1) The Clutch. This may either refuse to go in or refuse to come out. In the first case, the car cannot be started, and in the second, it cannot be stopped. The former contingency is humiliating, the latter expensive. (2) The Gears. These have a habit of becoming entangled with another. Persons in search of a novel sensation are recommended to try getting the live axle connected simultaneously with the top speed forward and the

reverse.

one

(3) The Driving-Shaft. The

front end of this is comparatively intelligible, but the tail is shrouded in mystery. It merges into a thing called the Differential. I have no idea what this is. It is kept securely concealed in a sort of Bluebeard's chamber attached to the back - axle. Inquiries of mine as to its nature and purpose were always greeted by Mr Gootch with amused contempt or

genuine alarm, according as I merely displayed curiosity on the subject, or expressed a desire to have the axle laid bare. C. Trouble with the car. (With which is incorporated trouble with the brakes and steering apparatus.)

It must not be imagined that the car will necessarily go because the engine is running. One of the wheels may refuse to go round, possibly because(1) You have omitted to

take the brake off.

(2) Something has gone
wrong with the differ-
ential. (I have no
further comment to
offer on this head.)
(3) It has just dropped off.
(N.B. This only hap-
pened once.)

After a time, then, I was able not merely to foretell the coming of one of Bill Bailey's periods of rest from labour, but to diagnose the cause and make up a prescription.

If the car came to a standstill for no outwardly perceptible reason, I removed the bonnet and took a rapid inventory of Bill's most vital organs, sending The Gruffin back along the road at the same time, with instructions to retrieve anything of a metallic nature which she might discover there.

When Bill Bailey without previous warning suddenly charged a hedge or passing pedestrian, or otherwise

ex

hibited a preference for the

footpath as opposed to the roadway, I gathered that the steering-gear had gone wrong again. The Gruffin, who had developed an aptness for applied mechanics most unusual in her sex, immediately produced from beneath the seat a suit of blue overalls of her own construction, of which she was inordinately proud I hope I shall be able to dress her as cheaply in ten years' time,— and proceeded to squirm beneath the car. Here, happy as a queen, she lay upon her back on the dusty road, with oil and petrol dripping in about equal proportions into her wide grey eyes and open mouth, adjusting a bit of chronically refractory worm-and-wheel gear which I, from reasons of embonpoint and advancing years, found myself unable to reach.

was

Finally, if my nose assailed by a mingled odour of blistering paint, melted indiarubber, and frizzling metal, I deduced that the cooling apparatus had gone wrong, and that the cylinders were red-hot. The petrol tap was hurriedly turned off, and The Gruffin and I retired gracefully, but without undue waste of time, to a distance of about fifty yards, where we sat down behind the highest and thickest wall available, and waited for a fall of temperature, a conflagration, or an explosion, as the case might be.

Bill Bailey remained in my possession for nearly two years. During that time he covered three thousand miles, consumed more petrol and oil than I