The driver had let the engine stop. Sir Charles sat tapping either foot, his eyes alight, and his hands working nervously. The man was working the barrel organ in front of the machine; the piston started once or twice vigorously, then died down again. Sir Charles got out. “If you can’t make your damn kettle go,” he said,--then he suddenly smiled. “What a good-natured face you have,” he remarked with an abrupt transition of tone. “It’s a brutal thing for men like me with enormous incomes to bully people who have to be out in all weathers, though I must say you taxi-men are a privileged lot! You’ve always got a herd of poor fellows round you, running messages for you and what not. You know,” he went on still more familiarly, “if you didn’t look so jolly good-natured I wouldn’t get into the cab again: but I will now. I will now,” he nodded reassuringly to show there was no ill-feeling, and he climbed again into the taxi, which at last started off upon its journey. Sir Charles, within that vehicle, preserved for some moments the expression of strong silence which was at least one-half of his fortune. Suddenly that expression broke down; something tickled him hugely. Such a merry look came into his eyes as had perhaps not visited them since he was a child--if then. It occurred to him to look out of the window. The fact that the window was up in no way incommoded him. He butted his head through it and then very cautiously drew it in again. “That’s dangerous,” he muttered, “might have cut myself.” The driver of the taxi heard nothing. Sir Charles looked through the star of broken glass for a moment, then cautiously lowered the sash. He put his head out again, smiling almost to the point of laughter, and asked the driver whether he had noticed the absurd pomposity of the two sentries and the policemen outside Marlborough House. The taxi man simply said “Yes sir,” and went on driving. For a few minutes Sir Charles was silent, ruminating and smiling within. Then he put his head out again. “Yes, but did you?” he asked. And just at that point the traffic was stopped to allow a cross current from another street to pass. “What a fool a man can make of himself,” said Sir Charles suddenly to nobody, communing half aloud with his own soul. “It’s an amazing thing! I can’t conceive why I should put my head out of a window like that to tell him the way.... I suppose I was telling him the way ... but my head is so bad!... What a fool a man can make of himself!” The sternness of his expression returned. He remembered that the taxi-man knew his address and he bethought him how to escape from humiliation. When they had driven up to his house he would pretend it was the wrong number and drive somewhere else.