“_I_ don’t want to go anywhere. I’m thinkin’ of you who’ve got to live with her. She’ll burn her tubes if she loses her water?” “She will.” “I’ve never scorched yet, and I not beginnin’ now.” He shut off steam firmly. “Out you get, Pye, an’ shove her along by hand.” “Where to?” “The nearest water-tank,” was the reply. “And Sussex is a dry county.” “She ought to have drag-ropes—little pipe-clayed ones,” said Pyecroft. We got out and pushed under the hot sun for half-a-mile till we came to a cottage, sparsely inhabited by one child who wept. “All out haymakin’, o’ course,” said Pyecroft, thrusting his head into the parlour for an instant. “What’s the evolution now?” “Skirmish till we find a well,” I said. “Hmm! But they wouldn’t ’ave left that kid without a chaperon, so to say… I thought so! Where’s a stick?” A bluish and silent beast of the true old sheep-dog breed glided from behind an outhouse and without words fell to work. Pyecroft kept him at bay with a rake-handle while our party, in rallying-square, retired along the box-bordered brick-path to the car. At the garden gate the dumb devil halted, looked back on the child, and sat down to scratch. “That’s his three-mile limit, thank Heaven!” said Pyecroft. “Fall in, push-party, and proceed with land-transport o’ pinnace. I’ll protect your flanks in case this sniffin’ flea-bag is tempted beyond ’is strength.” We pushed off in silence. The car weighed 1,200 lb., and even on ball-bearings was a powerful sudorific. From somewhere behind a hedge we heard a gross rustic laugh. “Those are the beggars we lie awake for, patrollin’ the high seas. There ain’t a port in China where we wouldn’t be better treated. Yes, a Boxer ’ud be ashamed of it,” said Pyecroft. A cloud of fine dust boomed down the road. “Some happy craft with a well-found engine-room! How different!” panted Hinchcliffe, bent over the starboard mudguard. It was a claret-coloured petrol car, and it stopped courteously, as good cars will at sight of trouble. “Water, only water,” I answered in reply to offers of help. “There’s a lodge at the end of these oak palings. They’ll give you all you want. Say I sent you. Gregory—Michael Gregory. Good-bye!” “Ought to ’ave been in the Service. Prob’ly is,” was Pyecroft’s comment. At that thrice-blessed lodge our water-tank was filled (I dare not quote Mr. Hinchcliffe’s remarks when he saw the collapsible rubber bucket with which we did it) and we re-embarked. It seemed that Sir Michael Gregory owned many acres, and that his park ran for miles. “No objection to your going through it,” said the lodge-keeper. “It’ll save you a goodish bit to Instead Wick.” But we needed petrol, which could be purchased at Pigginfold, a few miles farther up, and so we held to the main road, as our fate had decreed.