engineer of the let's-have-a-look-at-it and enamel chipping
variety. Even a road-racer, geared to a hundred and twenty,
failed to satisfy him, and for a time he pined in vain at twenty
miles an hour along roads that were continually more dusty and
more crowded with mechanical traffic. But at last his savings
accumulated, and his chance came. The hire-purchase system
bridged a financial gap, and one bright and memorable Sunday
morning he wheeled his new possession through the shop into the
road, got on to it with the advice and assistance of Grubb, and
teuf-teuffed off into the haze of the traffic-tortured high road,
to add himself as one more voluntary public danger to the
amenities of the south of England.

"Orf to Brighton!" said old Smallways, regarding his youngest son
from the sitting-room window over the green-grocer's shop with
something between pride and reprobation. "When I was 'is age,
I'd never been to London, never bin south of Crawley--never
bin anywhere on my own where I couldn't walk. And nobody didn't
go. Not unless they was gentry. Now every body's orf
everywhere; the whole dratted country sims flying to pieces.
Wonder they all get back. Orf to Brighton indeed! Anybody want
to buy 'orses?"

"You can't say _I_ bin to Brighton, father," said Tom.

"Nor don't want to go," said Jessica sharply; "creering about and
spendin' your money."

3