The chauffeur stroked the side of the bonnet which contained the engines. ‘She’s a good thing,’ he said. ‘She’s a good going concern. But throttle her up never so, she won’t go less than a hundred miles an hour. So I made so free, your honour, since that was above speed-limit, to harness these two silly aeroplanes which between ’em go ninety miles an hour in the other direction. That brings she down to ten miles an hour, and no one can say a word against her.’ And then the two airmen threw their caps in the air, and shouted ‘Hurrah.’ This was all very clever on the part of the chauffeur, but as the bank was just opposite, and all that the motor-car had got to do was to stand quite still while Uncle Popacatapetl stepped in at one side and got out at the other, it seemed a little superfluous. But David appreciated kind intentions, and next minute he found himself hand-in-hand with the chauffeur and the airmen, and they were all dancing in a circle, singing ‘Ninety miles one ways, and a hundred miles the others, And some of us are nephews, and all of us are brothers.’ ‘Then are you ready to start, your honour?’ said the chauffeur, when they had finished dancing. David pulled himself together. ‘Yes, but I am taking an invalid with me,’ he said. ‘It’s my uncle, who is far from well, like the spider!’ ‘The one that sat down next that old woman?’ asked the chauffeur, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘He’s all right again, he is.’ ‘It’s that sort of illness,’ said David. ‘He’s coming to tea with me, but he had better have a little drive first, to give him an appetite. We’ll go along some road with plenty of telegraph wires. They make him feel better.’ The window of the shoemaker’s house was thrown open, and David’s uncle looked out in his mask. ‘Much better,’ he said. ‘Better much, much better,’ and he closed it again so violently that all the glass broke. ‘Crash!’ said the second of the airmen. He had a very long elastic sort of nose, which David had not noticed before. Then both of them and the chauffeur opened their mouths very wide, as if they were going to sing again. ‘There must be no more singing,’ said David sternly, and they all shut their mouths again with a snap. There was evidently no time to lose, for David could hear the roaring of the fire in the bank opposite, over which poor Uncle Popacatapetl was to be melted after he had been cut up, and against the red glow of it he could see the heads of the Mint-man and the manager pressed so tightly against the glass that the tips of their noses were quite white, as they looked out and wondered why the motor-car didn’t return. ‘Come on, uncle,’ he shouted, ‘the tea will be spoiled,’ and he gave him a great wink to show that he had got an idea in his head.