“Well, he saw what had happened, or guessed it. He said, ‘They are troublesome things, those machines; they want understanding.’ I said, ‘They want taking up and flinging into the sea, that’s what they want!’ I was feeling mad because I hadn’t a match about me, and I use a lot. He said, ‘They stick sometimes; the thing to do is to put another penny in; the weight of the first penny is not always sufficient. The second penny loosens the drawer and tumbles out itself; so that you get your purchase together with your first penny back again. I have often succeeded that way.’ Well, it seemed a silly explanation, but he talked as if he had been weaned by an automatic machine, and I was sawney enough to listen to him. I dropped in what I thought was another penny. I have just discovered it was a two-shilling piece. The fool was right to a certain extent; I have got something out. I have got this.” He held it towards me; I looked at it. It was a packet of Everton toffee. “Two and a penny,” he remarked, bitterly. “I’ll sell it for a third of what it cost me.” “You have put your money into the wrong machine,” I suggested. “Well, I know that!” he answered, a little crossly, as it seemed to me—he was not a nice man: had there been any one else to talk to I should have left him. “It isn’t losing the money I mind so much; it’s getting this damn thing, that annoys me. If I could find that idiot Id ram it down his throat.” We walked to the end of the platform, side by side, in silence. “There are people like that,” he broke out, as we turned, “people who will go about, giving advice. I’ll be getting six months over one of them, I’m always afraid. I remember a pony I had once.” (I judged the man to be a small farmer; he talked in a wurzelly tone. I don’t know if you understand what I mean, but an atmosphere of wurzels was the thing that somehow he suggested.) “It was a thoroughbred Welsh pony, as sound a little beast as ever stepped. I’d had him out to grass all the winter, and one day in the early spring I thought I’d take him for a run. I had to go to Amersham on business. I put him into the cart, and drove him across; it is just ten miles from my place. He was a bit uppish, and had lathered himself pretty freely by the time we reached the town. “A man was at the door of the hotel. He says, ‘That’s a good pony of yours.’ “‘Pretty middling,’ I says. “‘It doesn’t do to over-drive ’em, when they’re young,’ he says. “I says, ‘He’s done ten miles, and I’ve done most of the pulling. I reckon I’m a jolly sight more exhausted than he is. “I went inside and did my business, and when I came out the man was still there. ‘Going back up the hill?’ he says to me. “Somehow, I didn’t cotton to him from the beginning. ‘Well, I’ve got to get the other side of it,’ I says, ‘and unless you know any patent way of getting over a hill without going up it, I reckon I am.’