Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
It was a splendid six-cylinder affair, brand new, with the tyres little worn. There were seven tins of petrol stacked behind as well as spare tyres, and, looking in, I saw map-cases and field-glasses strewn on the seats as if the owners had only got out for a minute to stretch their legs. Peter came back and reported that the courtyard was empty.
The good slush of the once dusty road, broken to bits by military traffic, had stiffened into black grease. Round a bend of the road we skidded alarmingly. Marigold has a theory that in summer time a shirt next the skin is the only wear for humans and square-tread tyres the only wear for motor-cars. With some acerbity I pointed out the futility of his proposition.
"My driving leaves something to be desired," said Mr. Britling with an air of frank impartiality. "But I have only just got this car for myself after some years of hired cars the sort of lazy arrangement where people supply car, driver, petrol, tyres, insurance and everything at so much a month. It bored me abominably. I can't imagine now how I stood it for so long.
The hospital a sort of monotone, a place of whispers and wheels moving on rubber tyres, long corridors, and strangely unsexed women moving in them. Unsexed not in any real sense, but the white clothes, the hidden hair, the stern white collar just below the chin, give them an air of school-girlishness, an air and a look women don't wear in the world. They seem unexpectant.
"It's all the fault of that there dog," said he, twisting his head so as to glare at the little beast, who, after a yelp and a bound, had calmly recaptured his position and resumed his interrupted occupation. "It's all the fault of that there Marigold," I retorted, "who can't see the sense of using studded tyres on a greasy surface. What's to be done now?"
He produced the chamois leather bag, paid the five sovereigns, and received five and sixpence change and also a receipt which he put in his pocket. Then Jim appeared, an inconspicuous looking man, wriggling into a driving coat that had seen better days, the Ford was taken from its den, the tyres examined, and the petrol tank filled. "Haven't you an overcoat?" asked the proprietor.
"Helped to blow up their tyres, which we thought was really saintly, when we weren't asked to go with them," said the still injured Wendy. "Well, it's a pretty go they're all off! Bunty's just had a telegram from Toddlekins. She's coming back this afternoon, and wants the trap to meet the four-thirty train." "She should! She's in a precious hurry to leave her beloved London. Whence this thusness?"
He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer evenings, an infirm widow of independent, if limited, means, in her convalescent bathchair with slow revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the North Circular road opposite Mr Gavin Low's place of business where she had remained for a certain time scanning through his onelensed binocular fieldglasses unrecognisable citizens on tramcars, roadster bicycles equipped with inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney carriages, tandems, private and hired landaus, dogcarts, ponytraps and brakes passing from the city to the Phoenix Park and vice versa.
There was a rush for tyres. The Quarter-Bloke did not rush. He only smiled. His great triumph was the affair of the leather jackets. A maternal Government thought to send us out leather jackets. After tea the Q.-B. bustled in with them. We rode out with them the next morning. The 2nd Corps had not yet received theirs.
First it was only refugees and war correspondents. Then the Colonel came out and stuck his head in at the back. He got quite excited when he saw we could take five stretcher cases. "I showed him our tyres and the electric light, and I ran the stretchers in and out for him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking