Elated by my triumphs, I scarcely listened further to Jack’s directions; how, if I thought there was danger, all I had to do was to unclutch, and put on the brake, whereupon the car would stop as if by magic, as it had for Molly in the Fulham Road; how I must not forget that the foot brakes had a way of obeying fiercely, and must not be applied with violence; how I must remember to pull the brake lever by my hand, towards me if I wanted to stop; how it acted on expanding rings on the inside faces of drums, which were on the back wheels (I pitied those poor, concealed faces, for the description was neuralgic, somehow), and I could lock them at almost any speed.

“I want to get on the third, and then I’ll try the fourth, thank you,” I interpolated impatiently.  “More-more!  Faster, faster!  Whew, this knocks spots out of the Ice Run!”

“Let him have his way, Jack,” cried Molly, speaking for the first time.  “Hurrah, the motor microbe is in his blood, and never, never will he get it out again.”

“Full speed ahead, then!” said Jack.

I took him at his word.  I could have shouted for joy.  Mercedes was mine, and I was Mercedes’.

CHAPTER IV

Pots, Kettles, and Other Things

“Seared is, of course, my heart—­but unsubdued
Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.” 
—­C.S.  CALVERLEY.

* * * * *

“A little buttery, and therein
A little bin,
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
Unchipt, unflead;
Some little sticks of thorn or brier
Make me a fire.” 
—­ROBERT HERRICK.

If any man had told me before I started, that in two days I should find it a genuine sacrifice to stop driving a motor car, I should have looked upon him as a polite lunatic.  It was only because Jack could drive faster than he dared to let me, and because I was ashamed to tell Molly that after all I was not in a desperate hurry to reach Paris or anywhere else, that I finally tore myself from the driver’s seat of the Mercedes.  Afterwards, though I had not reached the stage when confession is good for the soul, I sat wondering what there was expensive and at the same time disagreeable which I could give up for the sake of possessing a motor of my own.  In various phases of my mental and spiritual development, I had framed different conceptions of a future state beyond this life.  Never, even in my earliest years, had I sincerely wished to be an angel with an undeserved crown weighing down my forehead, and a harp, which I should be totally incompetent to play, within my hand; but now it struck me that there might be a worse sort of Nirvana than driving a 10,000 horsepower car along a broad, straight road free from dogs, chickens, or any other animals (except, perhaps, rich, knighted grocers), and reaching all round Saturn’s ring.

Dogs had been the one “little speck in garnered fruit” for me when driving, for I love dogs and would not willingly injure so much as the end hair of the most moth-eaten mongrel’s tail; therefore my brain searched a remedy against their onslaught, as I sat mute, inglorious, in the tonneau, after my late triumphs.