Well, I learned a good deal that day: first, that in England the right side of the road is the wrong side, and, second, that while a "soft answer may turn away wrath," there is nothing that so exasperates an angry woman as to sit silent and smile like an imbecile! I had intended to pass the night at Grantham, but finding it would make too long a day at the rate at which I was travelling, I turned aside to Peterborough. My education in motoring progressed by learning something about the rate of travelling. I had been told that twenty miles an hour was a safe and comfortable speed, and consequently seldom allowed the speedometer to rise above that figure. But when I found how often I had to slow down in passing through a village, and to stop altogether in towns on account of traffic, I found that one must keep pretty steadily at "thirty" to average twenty miles an hour. To this rule ought to be added the remark that the driver who has an instinct for getting off the road loses more time in a day than is expected! The entrance to the stable-yard at the inn in Peterborough, as is frequently the case in old inns, leads under a narrow archway. These were built when the farmer's two-wheeled gigs were the vogue and were no inconvenience to the driver. But it requires skilful management to turn a motor into one without touching the brickwork on either side. If the hub of a gig collided with the masonry, it was the brickwork which gave way. But the mud-guard of a motor is about as pliable as metal can well be. If an archway could speak it would doubtless have many a joyful thing to say about these new-fangled machines! How proudly they roll up the High Street! How timidly they turn the corner into the narrow way! How fearfully they crawl toward the opening in the yard! The reckless gigs took the turning with a careless swing and, not infrequently, nipped the buttress, as the deep groove in the brickwork shows. Alas! I had not yet learned caution, and a crumpled mud-guard was the penalty. The grinning ostler did what he could to bend it into shape, but never again would it have the smart appearance it once had, and every chauffeur would look with scorn on the foolish man who had tried to do what the natty gigs had often done and been none the worse for! We are a swifter race than our fathers, but a motor will no more stand what the old carts did than a chauffeur can drink as did those old Jehus, without paying a heavy penalty.