ferret. I can whistle on my fingers. Sweeping into that unsuspecting
hamlet I remembered this lone accomplishment of mine, plunged two
fingers into my cheeks and emptied my chest through them.

"Honk, honk," blasted something in my ear and, glancing round, I saw
that the child had swallowed the bulbless end of his horn and was
using it bugle-wise.

Thus, shrilling and honking, we swooped through Bailleul-aux-Hondains,
zig-zagging from kerb to kerb. A speckly cock and his platoon of hens
were out in midstream, souvenir-hunting. We took them in the rear
before they had time to deploy and sent a cloud of fluff-_fricassée_
sky-high. A Tommy was passing the time o' day with the Hebe of the
Hotel des Trois Enfants, his mules contentedly browsing the straw
frost-packing off the town water supply. The off-donkey felt the hot
breath of the car on his hocks and gained the _salle-à-manger_ (_viâ_
the window) in one bound, taking master and mate along with him.

The great-great-granddam of the hamlet was tottering across to the
undertakers to have her coffin tried on, when my frantic whistling and
the bray of the bugle-horn pierced the deafness of a century. With a
loud creaking of hinges she turned her head, summed up the situation
at a glance and, casting off half-a-dozen decades "like raiment
laid apart," sprang for the side-walk with the agility of an infant
gazelle. We missed her by half-an-inch and she had nobody but herself
to thank.

Against a short incline, just beyond the stricken village, the car
came to a standstill of its own accord, panting brokenly, quivering in
every limb.