“Not that Mumma is in the least narrow-minded about things of that sort, or indeed of any sort. Long before the days of women’s suffrage--although of course she disapproved utterly of the militant ones--Mumma always said that she saw no harm whatever in a woman having a vote, so long as she could find a good wise man to tell her how to use it.” I could only feel thankful that neither Sallie nor Martyn was present to hear this remarkable testimony to Mumma’s catholicity of outlook. It was the summer that Christopher Ambrey spent at the Manor House with us, that Puppa acquired a motor car. The girls were not allowed to drive it. Two of them sat on the back of the car, poised upon the extreme edge of the seat, while Mumma sat in front and Puppa drove. Christopher once told me that it took General Kendal five-and-twenty minutes to drive from “Dheera Dhoon” to Miss Applebee’s shop--a distance of perhaps half a mile. Mumma, sitting beside him, and diffusing a general sense of tension, adopted the role of look-out. “I should bear a little to the right here, Puppa--you remember the bad place in the road? Not too much, dear....” Sometimes she cast a worried look behind them, and discerned something on the sky line almost invisible to less anxious eyes. “Something coming, Puppa.... No, not just yet, dear, but I thought I’d warn you, as it will want to pass us. I suppose they will sound their horn before they get quite close up. Girls, there’s a car coming up behind us.” Poor General Kendal gripped the wheel tighter and tighter--until, Christopher said, the veins sprang out on the backs of his hands--and drove slower and slower. “A cart coming _towards_ you, Puppa ... take care, the road is so narrow here ... it’s coming towards us--it’s just a little way in front, isn’t it? Don’t get fussed, dear.” I have never been out in the General’s car myself, but I believe that he has never become a really confident driver, and that to this day Mumma sits beside him and keeps up a running fire of warnings. As for the Kendal girls, they go almost everywhere on their bicycles. They say that having too many people in the car always makes poor Puppa so nervous. _Chapter Four_ It was Nancy Fazackerly herself who subsequently told me all about her musical evening. She very often comes to see me, and, unlike the Kendals, never causes me to see myself in the unpleasant light of something accomplished, something done, for the good of somebody else’s soul. The party, it is perhaps needless to say, was invited to come in after supper. “So many people prefer to dine quietly at home,” said Mrs. Fazackerly. Captain Patch, one of the few people with whom old Carey--Mrs. Fazackerly’s father--had not had time to quarrel--put him into a good humor in the morning by presenting him with a small work entitled “Poison Crimes of the Past.” Old Carey’s hobby is criminology.