Hinchcliffe returned, drawn as by ropes to my steam-car, round which he
walked in narrowing circles.
"What's her speed?" he demanded of the engineer.
"Twenty-five," said that loyal man.
"Easy to run?"
"No; very difficult," was the emphatic answer.
"That just shows that you ain't fit for your rating. D'you suppose that a
man who earns his livin' by runnin' 30-knot destroyers for a parstime--for
a parstime, mark you!--is going to lie down before any blighted land-
crabbing steam-pinnace on springs?"
Yet that was what he did. Directly under the car he lay and looked upward
into pipes--petrol, steam, and water--with a keen and searching eye.
I telegraphed Mr. Pyecroft a question.
"Not--in--the--least," was the answer. "Steam gadgets always take him that
way. We had a bit of a riot at Parsley Green through his tryin' to show a
traction-engine haulin' gipsy-wagons how to turn corners."
"Tell him everything he wants to know," I said to the engineer, as I
dragged out a rug and spread it on the roadside.
"_He_ don't want much showing," said the engineer. Now, the two men had
not, counting the time we took to stuff our pipes, been together more than
three minutes.
"This," said Pyecroft, driving an elbow back into the deep verdure of the
hedge-foot, "is a little bit of all right. Hinch, I shouldn't let too much
o' that hot muckings drop in my eyes, Your leaf's up in a fortnight, an'
you'll be wantin' 'em.
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