But he had wasted three minutes of our valuable fifteen.  Though on the open road we speeded up the car to her sixty miles an hour, we had to slow down in the narrow lanes.  Once we were held up by a country cart, and once by cows in our track, and Norah was beside herself at each halt.

As we careened into the station yard I thought that my wife would have hurled herself out of the car.

The station-master stood by the booking-office door.  He had an ominous air of leisure.  And when he saw us coming he looked at his watch.

He told us that we had missed the train by three minutes (the three minutes that Kendal had wasted).

I had jumped out of the car and was telling Kendal that it was all his fault, and that if he’d done what he was told we should have caught the train, when he turned on me as only a chauffeur convicted of folly can turn.

“Stand away from the car, sir,” he shouted.  He jerked her nose round with the savage energy of a chauffeur in the wrong; he seemed to impart his own fury to the car.  She snorted and screamed as he backed her and drove her forward and backed her again.

And again he shouted to me.  “You get in, sir, if you don’t want to be left be’ind.”

As he seemed to be animated chiefly by the fear of Jevons (whom, by the way, he adored), we could only suppose that his idea was to fly back to Amershott in time for Jimmy’s wire.

On the high road past the station he took the wrong turn.

I shouted then, “What do you think you’re doing, you confounded fool?”

“Ketch the London train at ’Orsham, sir,” said Kendal.  And he grinned.

“You can’t do it,” we said.

“I’ll ’ave a try,” said Kendal.

His honour as a chauffeur was at stake.  His blood was up.  His knowledge had begun to work in him and he adored his master.  He knew what he was trying to do.

We could do it if we kept our heads; if we exceeded the speed limit; if we had luck; if we didn’t break down; if neither the county constabulary nor the country traffic held us up.

Kendal declared we could do it easily and allow for accidents.  At Horsham Junction you have nearly half an hour to wait between the arrival of the Midhurst and Selham train and the departure of the London express.  And the local trains take more than half an hour to get from Selham to Horsham.  At a pinch you could speed the car up to the limit of the local train.  And, as we had to allow for accidents, we did speed her up whenever we saw a clean track before us.

The run to Selham was nothing to it.  It was as if we were racing the train with its three minutes start, as if, positively, we might overtake it at any of the intermediate stations, as if it were in this hope that we dashed up the long white slope to Petworth.

The heat of the day gathered over our heads and smouldered in the east.