Moss took about an hour and a half over his dinner, and when he came out he was picking his teeth with a great steel prong, and looking as pleased as though he had done the hotel waiters out of fourpence. I saw that he had come to some resolution, and that it was a satisfactory one. There was a twinkle in his little eyes you could not mistake, and he shook his head while he talked to me, just as though I were buying old clothes of him at twice their value. "Britten," he asked, "are you all ready?" "Quite ready, sir," said I--for I'd just that minute shoved my knife into another tyre. "Are you going back to Sandwich?" "I'm going to Lord Badington's," says he, with a roar of laughter, "why not? I'm going to ask for Miss Phyllis More, and say she's an ode fred of the family. Ha, ha! what do you think of that, Britten? Will I get the modey or won't I? Well, we'll see, my boy--so start her up, and be quick about it." I said "Yes, sir," and went round to the front of the car. My cry of astonishment when I saw the burst tyre would have done credit to Mr. Henry Irving himself. Perhaps I said some things I shouldn't have said--Moss did, anyway, and he raved so loud that the ostler had to tell him his wife and children were upstairs. "Another tyre gone--what do I pay you wages for? Adser me that! Who the ---- is going to pay the bill? Don't you see I must get to Sadwich to-night? A pretty sort of a dam fool you must be. Now you get that car going in twedy minutes, or I'll leave you in the street--so help me heaven I will----" And so on and so on, until I could have dropped for laughing where I stood. It was touching to hear him, upon my word it was; but I held my tongue for Miss Dolly's sake, and went to work quietly to take off the cover and examine the tube for the cut I didn't mean to find. When I told him presently that this was the last tube we had, and he'd better give me two pound eight to go and buy a new one, I thought his language would blow the ships out of the harbour; but he never gave me the money, and then I knew that he meant to stay at Dover all night, and that Miss Dolly had until the morning, anyway. "And by that time," said I to myself, "she'll be off to London if she's clever enough, and perhaps find Mr. Sarand at the station to meet her."