“Hush,” said Berry.  “That wonderful organ, my brain, is working.”  Rapidly he began to write upon the back of a menu.  “We must inform the world through the medium of the Press.  An attractive paragraph must appear in The Times.  What could be more appropriate than an epitaph?  Ply me with wine, child.  The sage is in labour with a song.”  Jill filled his glass and he drank.  “Another instant, and you shall hear the deathless words.  I always felt I should be buried in the Abbey.  Anybody give me a rhyme for ‘bilge’?  No, it doesn’t matter.  I have ingeniously circumvented the crisis.”

He added one line, held the card at arm’s length, regarded it as a painter a canvas, sighed, and began to read.

A painful tale I must relate. 
We used to live at thirty-eight,
But as we hope to go to heaven,
We’ve come to live at number seven. 
Now, if we’d lived at number nine,
I’d got a simply priceless line—­
I didn’t want to drag in heaven,
But nothing else will rhyme with seven.

“Soldier, mountebank, and rhymester too!” said Jonah.  “And yet we breathe the same air.”

“I admit it’s strange,” said my brother-in-law.  “But it was foretold by my predecessor.  I think you’ll find the prophecy in Henry the Fifth.  ’And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best, Neighboured by fruit of baser quality.’  My game, I think.  What?”

* * * * *

As was fitting, St. George’s Day dawned fair and cloudless.  Her passionate weeping of the day before dismissed, April was smiling—­shyly at first, as if uncertain that her recent waywardness had been forgiven, and by and by so bravely that all the sweet o’ the year rose up out of the snowy orchards, dewy and odorous, danced in the gleaming meadows and hung, glowing and breathless, in every swaying nursery that Spring had once more built upon the patient trees.

The Rolls sailed through the country, proudly indifferent to hill or dale, melting the leagues to miles with such swift deadliness as made you sorry for the lean old road that once had been so much to reckon with.

I was on the point of communicating this Quixotic reflection to Agatha Deriot, who was seated in front between Jill and myself, when there fell upon my reluctant ears that heavy sigh which only an expiring tire can heave.  As I slowed up, it occurred to me that the puissance of the roads of England was still considerable.

“Which is it?” said Agatha.

“Off hind, I fancy.”  We were in the midst of a pleasant beechwood, and I pulled in to the side of the road with a grunt.  “If it had to be, it might have happened in a less pleasing locality.”

“I gather,” said Berry’s voice, “I gather that something untoward has befallen the automobile.  Should I be wrong, correct me and explain the stoppage.”

“With that singular clarity of intellect which never fails to recognize the obvious, you have correctly diagnosed the case.  We have picked up a puncture.”