A Knight on Wheels Part 32

"I think, Miss Jennings, that it would be a pretty and appropriate thought if, for the future, on arriving at the scene of my daily toil, I were to kiss you good-morning."

"Think again," suggested Miss Jennings.

"Not necessarily for publication," continued the unabashed Timothy, "but as a guaranty of good faith. A purely domestic salute, in fact. These little things have a softening effect upon a man's character."

"They seem to have had a softening effect upon your brain," observed Miss Jennings swiftly.

"It would do me good," urged Tim. "I have no one to kiss me now that my dear mother has been called away."

Miss Jennings looked up, deceived for a moment.

"Is your mother dead?" she asked, more gently.

"Oh, no. She is very well, thank you," said Tim.

"But you said she had been called away."

"So she has."

"Where?"

"To Holloway Gaol," explained Tim softly. "She is a Militant Suffragette. She tried to burn down Madame Tussaud's. I miss her very much," he added with a sigh. "She comes out about twice a week, under the Cat and Mouse Act. I meet her at the prison gate with sandwiches, but she never kisses me, because her mouth is too full. Will you?"

"It seems to me, Mr. Rendle," remarked Miss Jennings, biting her lip, "that you and I are wasting our time. I have some work to do for Mr.

Meldrum. I'll trouble you to get out of this office into the show-room."

"Certainly, Miss Jennings," replied Timothy, striking an att.i.tude.

"Good-bye! I will face this thing like a man. I will fight it down. I shall probably go and shoot big game--in Regent's Park. May I send you a stuffed elephant? Or would you prefer a flock of pumas? I don't know what a puma is like, but the keeper will tell me."

The clatter of the typewriter drowned further foolishness, and Timothy departed to his duties. Here the incident would have ended, but for Miss Jennings's feminine inability to leave well alone.

"Haven't you got a young lady of your own?" she enquired one day of Tim, _a propos des bottes_.

"Yes," said Tim rapturously; "I have."

"Then, why--"

Timothy hastened to explain.

"Because I haven't met her yet. You cannot expect a lady to kiss you for your mother," he pointed out, "until you have spoken to her. The object of my affections lives in a castle in the air, and she has never actually come down to earth yet."

But Miss Jennings's attention had wandered.

"Kissing is a queer thing," she said musingly.

"It doesn't seem so after a while," Tim hastened to inform her.

"If you had got a young lady of your own," continued Miss Jennings, evidently debating a point which had occupied her attention before, "and you were to kiss another one, in a manner of speaking there would be no harm done."

"None whatever," agreed Tim heartily.

"What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over," continued Miss Jennings sententiously.

"Selah!" corroborated the expectant Timothy.

"But if the eye _was_ to see--my word!"

Miss Jennings inserted a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter, and continued:--

"Seems to me, kissing another young lady's young gentleman is just like picking up her cup of tea and taking a drink out of it. If she don't get to know about it, no one's a penny the wiser or a penny the worse. But if she does--well, she feels she simply _must_ have a clean cup! So don't you take any risks, Mr. Rendle. You've such a silly way of talking that I don't know whether you have a young lady or not. If you haven't one now, you will have some day. If you have--one that's at all fond of you--and go kissing me, you will be sorry directly afterwards."

"The Right Honourable Lady," chanted the graceless Timothy, "then resumed her seat amid applause, having spoken for an hour and fifty minutes. Very well, I will leave you. I shall go and hold Brand's hand in the garage. He loves me, anyhow. Hallo! I say--"

Miss Jennings's serene countenance had flushed crimson.

"Have I said anything to offend you?" asked Tim, in some concern. "I am awfully sorry if I have. I was only rotting, you know. I had no idea Brand was a friend of yours."

Miss Jennings, recovering herself quickly, replied with some asperity that he was no such thing, and again announced that she had some work to do and that the conversation would now terminate.

But it did not. There was a magnetism about Tim which invited confidences.

"I say, Philip, old son," remarked Tim, as they walked down Piccadilly the following Sunday afternoon, "are you aware that our office has become a home of romance?"

Philip did not reply. His thoughts for the moment were centred upon more absorbing business. Presently he said:--

"I think I shall take a long run to-morrow and give it a proper trial on one or two really bad hills, and then go down to Coventry and see Bilston again."

Tim sighed gently, and replied:--

"Permit me to remind you, O most excellent Theophilus,"--this was his retaliation for being addressed as "my son Timothy,"--"that to-day is the Sabbath, and that we have left the Britannia Motor Company and all its works, including the Meldrum Never-Acting Brake, behind us for the s.p.a.ce of twenty-four hours. In addition, we have washed ourselves and put on celluloid d.i.c.keys, and are now going to the Park to see Suffragettes. Let us be bright."

"Did I tell you the patent has been granted all right?" pursued Philip, referring presumably to the Meldrum Never-Acting Brake.

"You did," said Tim resignedly. "Seven times yesterday and five this morning."

"The Company simply must take it up," continued the single-minded inventor. "The brakes of the Britannia cars have always been their weakness, and now that we are building heavier and heavier bodies things are riskier than ever. Our present brake-power can't be developed any further: even Bilston admits that. My brake is magnetic--a different principle altogether. Its reserve of power is enormous. It would stop a motor-bus."

"Yes, dear old thing," said Tim soothingly. "I am sure it would. And if you don't come out of the gutter on to the pavement you will stop one, too, and then I shall have to waste a day taking you to Kensal Green in instalments."

He linked his arm in that of his preoccupied friend, and having drawn him into a place of safety, repeated his former question.

"Are you aware that our office has become a home of romance?"

Philip replied that he had not noticed it.

They were on their way to the Park, after the fas.h.i.+on of good citizens, to enjoy the summer suns.h.i.+ne and regale themselves with snacks of oratory upon divers subjects, served gratis by overheated enthusiasts in the neighbourhood of the Marble Arch. After that they were to take tea with Timothy's lady mother in Lowndes Square.