E. F. Benson

“ There was nothing particular known about cars that Harry did not know, and even if such chance detail existed, Alford would be able to supply the knowledge. For Harry was a real motorist, not a man who owns a dozen cars, of which he scarcely knows one from the other, but is content to be driven about the country in any that the chauffeur is so kind as to bring to the door. He owned but two, the old Bligh and the later Bertram, but he knew these as the trained doctor knows the nerves and arteries and glands and bones of the human body. ”

“ If the car was not running well, he would not say “What's the matter, Alford?” but by instinct, it almost seemed, though the instinct was the direct and legitimate result of intimate knowledge, he would say exactly what in the internal economy of the car was not fulfilling its proper function.
Indeed motoring could scarcely be called a hobby with him; it was more rightly described as his passion, and Madge, his wife, declared that Harry said his prayers looking toward the motor-house, even as the Mohammedan turns to Mecca. ”

“ They were both Northerners, and both loved the heather and pines of that salubrious place, while the extreme remoteness from any station, where anything that could without irony be called a train stopped, was discounted by the existence of the beloved motors. ”

“ He was a person of quiet leisurely humor, content to see the amusing side of a great deal that a man of less tranquillity might have passed by as trivial, or grumbled at and complained of as being irritating. In consequence he wasted not one ounce of annoyance at the fact that Madge had clearly been made aware of his presence, but chose to keep him waiting in the rain for a few minutes, because he had kept her waiting in the club-house for, he was afraid, a rather long period, owing to his absorption over the old Bligh, and his forgetfulness to observe whether it was raining or not. ”

“ Madge, who had no more feeling about motors than she had about earwigs—indeed, rather less—infinitely preferred the higher speed and greater smoothness of the Bertram, and as, whenever the weather was fine, and very often when it was wet, Harry drove his wife after lunch over to the golf-links, continued his drive, and called for her again before tea-time, it followed that the Bertram had been almost exclusively used. ”

“ All yesterday, for instance, she had been beset by the hideous sin—it seemed no less—of moving her head; she had ruined half the round by doing this with dreadful regularity each time she took her mashie in hand, with the effect that after a good drive or two, as the case might be, she dribbled the ball into a bunker, lost all the advantage she had already gained, and probably the hole as well.
That sort of thing could be avoided; it need never be done. ”

“ Parke, if only she would not put her mashie-shots into bunkers.
But in spite of the fiery ordeal that lay in front of her, she gave but little thought this evening to golf, but gradually drew from Harry the account of this new motor which he was contemplating. This had to be done insinuatingly and carefully, for Harry—the old angel—was, thanks to previous experience, very shy of inflicting motor talk on her. But eventually she got sufficient details; it was a 30-40 car, six-cylindered. The price, too, she got from him; ready to start it cost one thousand pounds. ”

“ For some reason best known to its builder there was attached to it a big stable with a motor-house, and that had clinched matters. Harry could bring down both motors, and career wildly all day over the country, while Madge could with less wildness—for she was a very steady player—hit golf-balls “all over”—so Harry expressed it—the excellent links at Woodcombe some six miles away. ”

“ Then compunction had seized Harry; he realized that even the most agreeable and gifted car cannot clean itself, and a thorough overhauling of the old Bligh was the result.
He found that it had begun to rain rather heavily when he came out, but Madge had to be fetched from her golf, and he determined to drive the renovated Bligh over for that purpose. There was a cape-hood to it with wings, so that they would keep perfectly dry, and Alford had clearly had about enough to-day. ”