Winston is my oldest friend, and when his letters were mere paeans in praise of automobilism, I looked upon his fad with compassionate indulgence.  Then we met in London after his marriage, and between the confidences which we had exchanged, he managed to sandwich in something about motor cars.  But I ruthlessly swept aside the interpolation as unworthy of notice.  When he suggested a drive in the new car, I called up all my tact to evade the invitation.  If the active part of me had not been stunned on the night when Helen threw me over, I believe I should have kept bright the jewel of consistency.  But the kindness of Molly in circumstances the opposite of kind, had undone me.  Here I was, pledged to get myself up like a figure of Fun, and sit glued for days to the seat of a noisy, jolting, ill-smelling machine which I hated, feeling (and looking), in my goggles and hairy coat, like a circus monkey or a circus dragon.

Nevertheless, I could confess the motor car to my man with comparative calmness.  That I should fall was no doubt a disappointment to him.  As a conscientious snob and a cherisher of conservative ideals, he could mention it to other valets without a blush.  The mules however, towards which the motor was to lead, was a different thing; and while poor Locker excavated me from the motor coat, my mind was busily devising means to keep the horrid secret of the mule hidden from him forever.

There was but one way to do this.

“I suppose, me lord, I’m to travel with the ’eavy luggage, and take rooms at the end of the journey,” he suggested.

The crucial moment had come.  If a man can support existence without the girl he loves, thought I, surely it must be possible for him to live without a valet.  “No, Locker,” I said firmly.  “I am to be Mr. and Mrs. Winston’s guest, and we—­er—­shall have no fixed destination.  I shall be obliged to leave you behind.”

“Very good, me lord,” returned Locker in a meek voice.  “Very good, me lord; has you will.  I do ’ope you won’t suffer from dust, with no one to keep you in proper repair, as you might say.  But no doubt it will be only for a short time.”

Knowing that days, weeks, and even months might pass while I consorted with motors and mules, far from valets and civilisation, I was nevertheless toward enough to hint that Locker must be prepared for a wire at any time.  I had often derived a quaint pleasure from the consciousness that he despised my bookish habits and certain unconventionalities not suited to a ‘hearl’; but one must draw the line somewhere, and I drew it at the mule.  I would give a good deal rather than Locker should suspect me of the mule.

It was arranged that we should leave from Jack’s house in Park Lane, and as we wanted to reach Southampton early, our start was to be at nine o’clock.  “In France,” Jack had said to me, “we could reel off the distance almost as quickly as the train; but in our blessed land, with its twenty miles an hour speed limit, its narrow winding roads, chiefly used in country places as children’s playgrounds, and its police traps, motoring isn’t the undiluted joy it ought to be.  The thing to prepare for is the unexpected.”