“Speak for yourself,” said Berry.  “I always let them lie.  I did gather a bunch of bursts once, but——­”

“Sorry,” said I.  “I forgot how near we were to Oxford.  What I meant was that some hostile body of a sharp nature had penetrated a tire, thus untimely releasing the air hitherto therein confined.”

“Thank you,” said Berry.  “Experience leads me to anticipate a slight delay, the while you effect the necessary repairs.  I shall therefore compose myself to slumber and meditation.  Possibly I shall toy with a cigarette.  Possibly——­”

“Your programme will, I fear, miscarry for more than one reason.  In the first place, you’re sitting on the jack.  In the second place, clumsy fool though you are, Jonah can change the wheel quicker if you help him.”  With that I climbed out of the driver’s seat, and lighted a cigarette.  “Who,” I added, “will come for a little walk?”

“I’m coming,” said Daphne, setting aside the rug and rising from her seat between Jonah and her husband.

“I forbid you,” said the latter, “to consort with that blasphemous viper.”

My sister leaned down and kissed him.

“A little gentle exercise,” she said, “will do you good.  I expect it’ll make you hot, so take your coat off.  Then you’ll have something to put on again.”

Coldly Berry regarded her.

“How long,” he said, “did it take you to work that out?”

As we strolled down the sun-flecked road in the wake of Miss Deriot and Jill, I turned and looked back at the car.  Something was squatting on the tarmac close to the petrol tank.  The fact that Jonah was unstrapping a spare wheel suggested that my brother-in-law was taking exercise....

My sister slid an arm through mine, and we walked idly on.  The road curled out of the wood into the unchecked sunlight, rising to where its flashing hedgerows fell back ten paces each, leaving a fair green ride on either side of the highway.  Here jacketed elms made up a stately colonnade, ready to nod their gay green crests at each stray zephyr’s touch, and throwing broad equidistant bars of shadow across the fresh turf and the still moist ribbon of metalling beyond.  Two piles of stones lay heaped upon the sward, and, as we drew near, we heard the busy chink of a stone-breaker’s hammer, a melodious sound that fitted both morning and venue to perfection.  Again I fell to thinking on the old coach road....

The stone-breaker was an old, old man, but the tone in which he gave us “Good day” was blithe and good to hear, while he looked as fit as a fiddle.

“You work very fast,” said I, as he reached for a mammoth flint.

“Aye,” he said.  “But it come easy, sir, after so many year.”

“Have you always done this?” said Daphne.

The old fellow plucked the gauze from his brow and touched his battered hat.

“Naught else, m’m.  Nine-and-seventy year come Michaelmas I’ve kep’ the Oxford road.  An’ me father before me.”