Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/30

 Our landlady was there, a duck of a woman; the hotel porters in green baize aprons stood and stared; some women washing clothes at a trough in the corner stopped their work; and a lot of funny, wee schoolboys, with short cropped hair and black blouses with leather belts, buzzed round, gesticulating and trying to explain the mechanism of the car to each other. Rattray bustled about with an oil-can in his hand, then loaded up our luggage, and all was ready. With more dignity than confidence I mounted to the high seat beside Aunt Mary. This time, with one turn of the handle, the motor started, so contrary is this strange beast, the automobile. One day you toil at the starting-handle half an hour, the next the thing comes to life with a touch, and nobody can explain why. Bowing to madame and the hotel people, we sailed gracefully out of the hotel yard, Rattray tootooing a fanfarronade on the horn. It was a splendid start!

The streets of Dieppe are of those horrid uneven tones that the French call pavé, and our car jolted over them with as much noise and clatter as if we'd had a cargo of dishes. You see the car's very solidly built and heavy—that, said Mr. Cecil-Lanstown, is one of its merits. It is of oak, an inch thick, and you can't break it. Another thing in its favour is that it has solid tyres, and not those horrid pneumatics, which are always bursting and puncturing, and give no end of trouble. "With solid tyres you are always safe," said Mr. Cecil-Lanstown. I can't help thinking, though, that on roads like these of Dieppe it would be soothing to have "pneus," as they