"Ain't you
glad it's all in the family somehow?"
We filled with water at a cottage on the edge of St. Leonard's Forest,
and, despite our increasing leakage, made shift to climb the ridge above
Instead Wick. Knowing the car as I did, I felt sure that final collapse
would not be long delayed. My sole concern was to run our guest well into
the wilderness before that came.
On the roof of the world--a naked plateau clothed with young heather--she
retired from active life in floods of tears. Her feed-water-heater
(Hinchcliffe blessed it and its maker for three minutes) was leaking
beyond hope of repair; she had shifted most of her packing, and her water-
pump would not lift.
"If I had a bit of piping I could disconnect this tin cartridge-case an'
feed direct into the boiler. It 'ud knock down her speed, but we could get
on," said he, and looked hopelessly at the long dun ridges that hove us
above the panorama of Sussex. Northward we could see the London haze.
Southward, between gaps of the whale-backed Downs, lay the Channel's zinc-
blue. But all our available population in that vast survey was one cow and
a kestrel.
"It's down hill to Instead Wick. We can run her there by gravity," I said
at last.
"Then he'll only have to walk to the station to get home. Unless we take
off 'is boots first," Pyecroft replied.
"That," said our guest earnestly, "would be theft atop of assault and very
serious.
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