It was a perfect afternoon in June, and Philip, who for some reason was in a reminiscent mood, wandered back in his thoughts to his first motor ride--that ecstatic and epoch-making journey in Mr. Mablethorpe's fiery chariot, Boanerges of blessed memory. Boanerges, alas, was no more. A fighter to the last, he had met his Waterloo more than two years ago in a one-sided but heroic combat with a Pantechnicon furniture-van. Always a strategist, Boanerges had taken the van in the rear, charging through its closed doors with devastating effect and recoiling into the roadway after the impact, with the first fruits of victory, in the shape of a wash-hand stand, adhering firmly to his crumpled radiator. But his triumph was momentary. The radiator stood gaping open; the cooling waters imprisoned therein gushed forth; the temperature of Boanerges rose to fever-heat; and as the faithful engine refused under any conditions to stop running, the whole sizzling fabric rapidly heated itself to redness and finally burst into flame, furnishing the inhabitants of Maida Vale with the finest and most pestiferous bonfire ever seen in Watling Street. So perished Boanerges, and the wash-hand stand with him. _Pax cineribus._ Roaming further down the avenues of remembrance, Philip came next to the _affaire_ Pegs, and the house on Hampstead Heath. Performing a brief sum in mental arithmetic, he calculated that Pegs would now be about twenty-two. Perhaps she was married by this time. Indeed, it was highly probable, for Montagu Falconer was not precisely the sort of person with whom one would choose to dwell longer than was absolutely necessary. Still, it was odd to think of such a little girl being married. He recalled some of their quaint childish conversations, and was conscious of a sudden _desiderium_--there is no exact word for it in English--for the days that were no more. It would be pleasant, he reflected, to have some one beside him now--especially some one with kind brown eyes and wavy hair--to cheer him with her presence and act as a repository for his private thoughts and ambitions. However, his own proper Lady would come along some day. Would she be like Pegs, he wondered? He touched the accelerator with his foot, and the car began to breast the three-mile slope of Wickmore Hill. It was on the farther side that he proposed to test his Brake. * * * * *