she knew it was more than that, and she was not surprised.
Jean was filled with a deep-seated distrust of motors. She felt that every motor was just waiting its chance to do its owner harm. She had started with no real hope of reaching any destination, and expected nothing less than to spend the night camping inside the car in some lonely spot. She had all provisions made for such an occurrence.
Jock said suddenly, "We're not going more than ten miles an hour," and then the car stopped altogether and David and Stark got down. Jean leaned out and asked what was wrong, and David said shortly that there was nothing wrong.
Presently he and Stark got back into their places and the car was started again. But it went slowly, haltingly, like a bird with a broken wing. They made up on a man driving a brown horse in a wagonette—a man with a brown beard and a cheerful eye—and passed him.
The car stopped again.
Again David and Stark got out and stared and poked and consulted together. Again Jean's head went out, and again she received the same short and unsatisfactory answer.
The brown-bearded man and his wagonette made up on them, looked at the car in an interested way, and passed on.
Again the car started, passed the wagonette, and went on for about a mile and stopped.
Again Jean's head went out.
"David," she said, "what is the matter?" and it goes far to show how harassed that polished Oxonian was when he replied, "If you don't take your face out of that I'll slap it."
Jean withdrew at once, feeling that she had been tactless and David had been unnecessarily rude—David who had never been rude to her since they were children, and had told each other home-truths without heat and without ill-feeling on either side. If this was to be the effect of owning a car——
"Wilfred the Gazelle's dead," said Mhor, and got out, followed by Jock, and in a minute or two by Jean.
They all sat down in the heather by the road-side.
Dead car notwithstanding, it was delicious sitting there in the spring sunshine. Tweed was nearing its source and was now only a trickling burn. A lark was singing high up in the blue. The air was like new wine. The lambs were very young, for spring comes slowly up that way, and one tottering little fellow was found by Mhor, and carried rapturously to Jean.
"Take it; it's just born," he said. "Jock, hold Peter tight in case he bites them."
"Did you ever see anything quite so new?" Jean said as she stroked the little head, "and yet so independent? Sheep are far before mortals. Its eyes look so perplexed, Mhor. It's quite strange to the world and doesn't know what to make of it. That's its mother over there. Take it to her; she's crying for it."
David came up and stood looking gloomily at the lamb. Perhaps he envied it being so young and careless and motor-less.
"Stark's busy with the car," he announced, rather needlessly, as the fact was apparent to all. "I'm dashed if I know what's the matter with the old bus…. Here's that man again…."
Jean burst into helpless laughter as the wagonette again overtook them. The driver flourished his whip and the horse broke into a canter—it looked like derision.
There was a long silence—then Jean said:
"If it won't go, it's too big to move. We shall have to train ivy on it and make it a feature of the landscape."
"Or else," said David, savagely and irreverently—"or else hew it in pieces before the Lord."
Stark got up and straightened himself, wiped his hands and his forehead, and came up to David.
"I've found out what's wrong," he said. "She'll manage to Moffat, but we'll have to get her put right there. It's…." He went into technical details incomprehensible to Jean.
They got back into the car and it sprang away as if suddenly endowed with new life. In a trice they had passed the wagonette, leaving it in a whirl of scornful dust. They ate the miles as a giant devours sheep. They passed the Devil's Beef Tub—Jock would have liked to tarry there and investigate, but Jean dared not ask Stark to stop in case they could not start again—and soon went sliding down the hill to Moffat. Hot puffs of scented air rose from the valley, they had left the moorlands and the winds, and the town was holding out arms to welcome them. They drove along the sunny, sleepy, midday High Street and stopped at a hotel.
Except David, no member of the Jardine family had ever been inside a hotel, and it was quite an adventure for them to go up the steps from the street, enter the swinging doors, and ask a polite woman with elaborately done hair if they might have luncheon. Yes, they might, and Peter, at present held tightly in Mhor's arms, could be fed in the kitchen if that would suit.
Stark had meantime taken the car to a motor-repairing place.
It was half-past three before the car came swooping up to the hotel doors. Jean gazed at it with a sort of fearful pride. It looked very well if only it didn't play them false. Stark, too, looked well—a fine, impassive figure.
"Will it be all right, Stark?" she ventured to inquire, but Stark, who rarely committed himself, merely said, "Mebbe."
Stark had no manners, Jean reflected, but he had a nice face and was a teetotaller, and one can't have everything.
To Mhor's joy the road now ran for a bit by the side of the railway line where thundered great express trains such as there never were in Priorsford. They were spinning along the fine level road, making up for lost time, when a sharp report startled them and made Mhor, who was watching a train, lose his balance and fall forward on to Peter, who was taking a sleep on the rug at their feet.
It was a tyre gone, and there was no time to mend it if they were to be at Carlisle in time for tea. Stark put on the spare wheel and they started again.
Fortune seemed to have got tired of persecuting them, and there were no further mishaps. They ran without a pause through village after village, snatching glimpses of lovely places where they would fain have lingered, forgetting them as each place offered new beauties.
The great excitement to Jock and Mhor was the crossing of the Border.
"I did it once," said Mhor, "when I came from India, but I didn't notice it."
"Rather not," said Jock; "you were only two. I was four, wasn't I, Jean? when I came from India, and I didn't notice it."
"Is there a line across the road?" Mhor asked. "And do the people speak Scots on one side and English on the other? I suppose we'll go over with a bump."
"There's nothing to show," Jock told him, "but there's a difference in the air. It's warmer in England."
"It's very uninterested of Peter to go on sleeping," Mhor said in a disgusted tone. "You would think he would feel there was something happening. And he's a Scots dog, too."
The Border was safely crossed, and Jock professed to notice at once a striking difference in air and landscape.
"There's an English feel about things now," he insisted, sniffing and looking all round him; "and I hear the English voices…. Mhor, this is how the Scots came over to fight the English, only at night and on horseback—into Carlisle Castle."
"And
