The face of the car's owner--whose conscience upon the subject of road-racing was evidently at war with his instincts--brightened wonderfully. "That is some notion," he cried. "You're right. Road-hogging is rotten bad form. We'll run this little lad down to Brooklands--oh, so gently!--and then go round the track all out. Will you come with me?" "Rather," replied the primeval Philip with great heartiness. "And come and dine at the Club afterwards," added Timothy, in a final burst of friendliness. Within the exaggerated saucer constructed for the purpose at Brooklands they succeeded in covering seventy-three miles in sixty minutes, Timothy deliriously clinging to the wheel and Philip sitting watchfully beside him to see that centrifugal force did not send the new car flying over the rim into the conveniently adjacent cemetery of Brookwood. Thereafter they dined together at the Royal Automobile Club, which seemed to Philip to contain several thousand members. Members swarmed in the great central hall, upon the staircase, and in all the lofty apartments opening therefrom. There appeared to be at least six hall-porters, and there were page-boys innumerable, who drifted about in all directions wearing worried expressions and chanting a mysterious dirge which sounded like "Mr. Hah-Hah, please!" There was a real post-office in one corner, and a theatre ticket-office in another. There were racquet courts, and a swimming-bath, and a shooting-gallery, and a gymnasium, and a bowling-alley, and a fencing-school. Timothy confidently announced that there was a golf links somewhere, but that he had not yet found time to play a round owing to the excessive length of the holes. Eschewing what Philip's host described as the "cock-and-hen" dining-room (where the two sexes could be seen convivially intermingled, partaking of nourishment to the sound of music), they ascended in a lift to the first floor, where they sat down in a vast refectory of a more monastic type. Here one gentleman greeted them at the door, while a second took Timothy's order for dinner, and passed it on to a third. The dishes were served by a fourth and cleared away by a fifth. The same ceremony was observed in the ordering of wine. "Less fuss up here than downstairs," explained Timothy.