"Naturally I can’t give any guarantee," replied Templeton, "but in all probability the engine will last out a few hours—until you have time to give it a thorough overhauling. If I may make a suggestion, let it cool down and run slowly, or the big ends will go altogether." "H’m! S’pose you know! How much?" "Oh! say half-a-crown." "Here y’are. Get in, Thomson." He shoved the chauffeur into the car. "Straight up!" he cried. The car rattled away, still smoking, but less vigorously than before. "Charming man!" said Eves, as the two returned to the shop. "Come across many like him, Bobby?" "Oh! one meets all sorts. But I really think, Tom, I should be in danger of losing my temper if everybody who stopped here for repairs were quite so—so——" "Exactly. Well, old sport, do hurry up with those valves. I had an early breakfast, and no squish—simply rotten, breakfast without squish. So hurry up, and we’ll go and swop some coupons." *II* Templeton placidly resumed his job; Eves remounted the bench and again took up the newspaper. After a minute or two he exclaimed: "I say, what do you think of this? ’Our worthy mayor, Alderman Noakes’——" "Who?" "Alderman Noakes. Recalls sweet memories, eh, old sport? That summer idyll in our early youth—law! what ages ago it seems! ’But ah! how it was sweet!’ That’s Browning, old man; not my own, I assure you. I seem to see, down the dim vista of departed years, the figure of our Noakes, smothered in half-consumed carbon, otherwise soot; and again the same Noakes, sprawling in a purling stream; and yet again the same Noakes, affectionately embracing his mother earth—various phases of Noakes concurrent with the flow of ideas in the cerebellum of——" "Oh, dry up, Tom! You really are an awful ass sometimes." "Who are you a-talking to, young feller? I was just pointing out that the name Noakes, on the principle of the association of ideas—but let’s see what it says. ’Our worthy mayor, Alderman Noakes, accompanied by the bailiff and reeves, will on December 21, for the four hundred and fifty-second time in the history of this ancient borough, perform the quaint ceremony of anointing the British Stone.’ The worthy mayor must be a hoary old Methuselah if he’s performed the ceremony four hundred and fifty-one times: he might be the great-grandfather ten times removed of that old rascal we knew. And if he’s even so distantly related as that, he’s probably a rascal too, and deserves to be kept waiting." "Waiting? What for?" "Why, for that model of urbanity and fur collar who wanted you to do somethink to this ’ere car and look alive, young feller. He said he was going to call on the mayor, you remember." "He’s part of the show, perhaps. I wonder what that ceremony is. What a ramshackle old car that was! But all existing cars will be scrapped when I get my two-way motor going." "That’s the latest, is it?"