"My dear Cannington, I know you better than I do your sister. She might resent my hints. If you really don't want her to marry this man Marr--I never heard of him, for my part--shake Dick Weston into a proposal and he can take his wife in his new airship for the honeymoon." "It would end in a funeral," grinned Cannington cheerfully. "Dicky's always having smashes. I don't want him to experiment with Mabel, you know, old chap. Hi! Here's Murchester, and yonder's a policeman. Slow down, Vance, you can't romp up the High Street at thirty miles an hour." "I don't see why not," I retorted, obeying orders, for the policeman really looked a suspicious character. "There! We're crawling along like a condemned snail, if that's what you want." "I want my tea," said Cannington irrelevantly, "don't you?" "No! I'll drop you at the Barracks and travel on to Clankton. There I put up for the night, and go up Norfolk way to-morrow." "What's your objective?" "I haven't got one. That is, I am simply looking round to see if I can poach on real life for a melodramatic plot. 'Adventures to the adventurous.'" Cannington nodded. "I thought old Marr wasn't clever enough to have made that up out of his own blessed head. But, I say, how do you expect to find your plot in a motor car?" "The latter-day vehicle of romance, my boy. Formerly your knight rode a horse, and went into the Unknown in search of the unexpected. Now he--that's me, you know--takes out his machine and looks for the expected in the Known. You understand?" "No, confound you. What do you hope to run across?" "An adventure." "What sort of one?" "How the Charles Dickens can I tell?" "Yet you said that the Known--" "Cannington, you wish me to spoil my epigrams by explanation. I decline to satisfy your morbid curiosity. All I know is, that the fountains of my imagination are dried up, and that I can't write a play which ought to be written if I am to earn enough to keep this car in petrol. I am, therefore--like Balzac--chasing my genius, and who knows upon what glorious adventure I may stumble." Cannington laughed scornfully. "All the adventure you'll drop across will be in running over some old woman, or in exceeding the speed-limit." "I care not," was my reckless reply. "I am prepared for anything." "Don't be an ass," urged the boy politely, as we spun through the Barrack gates. "Stop here for the night, and I'll put you up. Then we can go to London to-morrow and have a ripping time. . . . What?" "It's good of you, Cannington, and if I hadn't an income to earn I should accept with pleasure. As things are"--I stopped the car before the Mess door--"you can get down and send out a man to carry in your portmanteau." "Have a cup of tea, anyhow," said Cannington, slipping to the ground. I looked at my watch. "No, thanks. It's nearing six, and I have some distance to go. Don't delay me, boy."