unconventionalities not suited to a 'hearl'; but one must draw the
line somewhere, and I drew it at the mule. I would give a good deal
rather than Locker should suspect me of the mule.

It was arranged that we should leave from Jack's house in Park Lane,
and as we wanted to reach Southampton early, our start was to be at
nine o'clock. "In France," Jack had said to me, "we could reel off the
distance almost as quickly as the train; but in our blessed land, with
its twenty miles an hour speed limit, its narrow winding roads,
chiefly used in country places as children's playgrounds, and its
police traps, motoring isn't the undiluted joy it ought to be. The
thing to prepare for is the unexpected."

At half-past eight at Jack's door, I bade an almost affectionate
farewell to the last cabhorse with which for many wild weeks I should
have business dealings. The untrammelled life before me seemed to be
signalised by the lonely suit case which was the one article of
luggage I was allowed to carry on the motor. A portmanteau was to
follow me vaguely about the Continent, and I had visions of a pack to
supersede the suit case, when my means of transport should be a mule.
Sufficient for the motor was the luggage thereof, however, and when my
neat leather case was deposited in Jack's hall, I was rewarded with
Molly's approving comment that it would "make a lovely footstool."

We had breakfast together, as though nothing dreadful were about to
happen, and I heartened myself up with strong coffee. By the time we
had finished, and Molly had changed herself from a radiant girl into a
cream-coloured mushroom, with a thick, straight, pale-brown stem, the
Thing was at the door--Molly's idol, the new goddess, with its votive
priest pouring incense out of a long-nosed oil can and waving a