And Tom, the factotum, polishing boots by the back door, agreed with her. Twenty years ago he had been the coachman, and, immaculate in his grey livery and silver buttons and top hat with the cockade at the side, had driven the high gig about the country lanes. It had nearly broken his heart when his master decided to give up the horses and take to motoring instead. There were tears in his eyes when he groomed Czar and Ruby for the last time. But, though Dr. Tremayne might march with the century, and visit his patients more quickly in his new automobile, he had no intention of parting with his old coachman, and determined to turn him into a chauffeur instead. So Tom learnt to drive the car, learnt almost too well, indeed, for, determined not to show the white feather, he waxed foolhardy, and would career round corners with one wheel off the ground, or dash down hills at such breakneck speed that the doctor, not usually a nervous subject, would gasp with relief to find himself alive at the bottom. Something plainly had to be done, or Tom would soon have broken the family's bones, and the question was how to shelve him without giving him offence. The riddle, fortunately, solved itself by the retirement of Dalton, the factotum-gardener. Dr. Tremayne decided to retrench and to keep only one man-servant. In future he drove his own car, and Tom was installed in Dalton's place, to weed the walks, clip the grass, polish the knives, and carry the coals. He made friends at once with Mavis and Merle, or rather he merely transferred to them the friendship he had given to their mother twenty-five years ago, when she used to spend her holidays at Bridge House, and rode Cobs, the white pony, whose grave lay at the bottom of the paddock. To Tom, motoring was the sign of a degenerate age, and he would descant to the girls about the good old days, when people were not in such a frantic hurry and could wait for the doctor until he drove up behind a well-groomed horse, and made such a case for the past times that Merle, in spite of her ambition to drive a car, began to wish Czar and Ruby and Cobs were still in the stable, and she herself could be clad in Mother's old riding-habit and flourish Cousin Percy's discarded whip as she ambled along the lanes on pony-back. That, however, was before she had had a run in the little, yellow Deemster car. After the first trip to Chagmouth she completely changed her mind.