‘Oh, well, if it’s a pub,’ said Uncle Dan, ‘I dunna’ object.’
He frankly admitted, on entering, that he had never before seen a pub full of little tables and white cloths, and flowers, and young women, and silver teapots, and cake-stands. And though he did pour his tea into his saucer, he was sufficiently at home there to address the younger Miss Callear as ‘young woman’, and to inform her that her beverage was lacking in Orange Pekoe. And the Misses Callear, who conferred a favour on their customers in serving them, didn’t like it.
He became reminiscent.
‘Aye!’ he said, ‘when I left th’ Five Towns fifty-two years sin’ to go weaving i’ Derbyshire wi’ my mother’s brother, tay were ten shilling a pun’. Us had it when us were sick—which wasna’ often. We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i’ th’ morning till eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week’s work on ye’ back, and home again wi’ th’ brass.
‘They’ve lost th’ habit of work now-a-days, seemingly,’ he went on, as the car moved off once more, but slowly, because of the vast crowds emerging from the Knype football ground. ‘It’s football, Saturday; bands of a Sunday; football, Monday; ill i’ bed and getting round, Tuesday; do a bit o’ work Wednesday; football, Thursday; draw wages Friday night; and football, Saturday. And wages higher than ever. It’s that as beats me—wages higher than ever—
‘Ye canna’ smoke with any comfort i’ these cars,’ he added, when Harold had got clear of the crowds and was letting out. He regretfully put his pipe in his pocket.
Harold skirted the whole length of the Five Towns from south to north, at an average rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour; and quite soon the party found itself on the outer side of Turnhill, and descending the terrible Clough Bank, three miles long, and of a steepness resembling the steepness of the side of a house.
The car had warmed to its business, and Harold took them down that declivity in a manner which startled even Maud, who long ago had resigned herself to the fact that she was tied for life to a young man for whom the word ‘danger’ had no meaning.
At the bottom they had a swerve skid; but as there was plenty of room for eccentricities, nothing happened except that the car tried to climb the hill again.
‘Well, if I’d known,’ observed Uncle Dan, ‘if I’d guessed as you were reservin’ this treat for th’ owd uncle, I’d ha’ walked.’
The Etches blood in him was pretty cool, but his nerve had had a shaking.
Then Harold could not restart the car. The engine had stopped of its own accord, and, though Harold lavished much physical force on the magic handle in front, nothing would budge. Maud and the old man got down, the latter with relief.
‘Stuck, eh?’ said Dan. ‘No steam?’
‘That’s it!’ Harold cried, slapping his leg. ‘What an ass I am! She wants petrol, that’s all. Maud, pass a couple of cans. They’re under the seat there, behind. No; on the left, child.’
However, there was no petrol on the car.
‘That’s that cursed Durand’ (Durand being the new chauffeur—French, to match the car). ‘I told him not to forget. Last thing I said to the fool! Maud, I shall chuck that chap!’
‘Can’t we do anything?’ asked Maud stiffly, putting her lips together.
‘We can walk back to Turnhill and buy some petrol, some of us!’ snapped Harold. ‘That’s what we can do!’
‘Sithee,’ said Uncle Dan. ‘There’s the Plume o’ Feathers half-a-mile back. Th’ landlord’s a friend o’ mine. I can borrow his mare and trap, and drive to Turnhill and fetch some o’ thy petrol, as thou calls it.’
‘It’s awfully good of you, uncle.’
‘Nay, lad, I’m doing it for please mysen. But Maud mun come wi’ me. Give us th’ money for th’ petrol, as thou calls it.’
‘Then I must stay here alone?’ Harold complained.
‘Seemingly,’ the old man agreed.
After a few words on pigeons, and a glass of beer, Dan had no difficulty whatever in borrowing his friend’s white mare and black trap. He himself helped in the harnessing. Just as he was driving triumphantly away, with that delicious vision Maud on his left hand and a stable-boy behind, he reined the mare in.
‘Give us a couple o’ penny smokes, matey,’ he said to the landlord, and lit one.
The mare could go, and Dan could make her go, and she did go. And the whole turn-out looked extremely dashing when, ultimately, it dashed into the glare of the acetylene lamps which the deserted Harold had lighted on his car.
The red end of a penny smoke in the gloom of twilight looks exactly as well as the red end of an Havana. Moreover, the mare caracolled ornamentally in the rays of the acetylene, and the stable-boy had to skip down quick and hold her head.
‘How much didst say this traction-engine had cost thee?’ Dan asked, while Harold was pouring the indispensable fluid into the tank.
‘Not far off twelve hundred,’ answered Harold lightly. ‘Keep that cigar away from here.’
‘Fifteen pun’ ud buy this mare,’ Dan announced to the road.
‘Now, all aboard!’ Harold commanded at length. ‘How much shall I give to the boy for the horse and trap, uncle?’
‘Nothing,’ said Dan. ‘I havena’ finished wi’ that mare yet. Didst think I was going to trust mysen i’ that thing o’ yours again? I’ll meet thee at Bleakridge, lad.’
‘And I think I’ll go with uncle too, Harold,’ said Maud.
