The River Bypass

The mud from the western turnpike was gone.

By seven o'clock the following morning, two junior garage attendants had washed Number Sixty-Four until its dark green lacquer shone again. The brass radiator was polished clean, the dried road clay was scraped from the leaf springs, and the redesigned fuel filter bowl—hand-fitted by Davies late the night before—sat proudly beneath the carburetor line.

Wallace walked into the eastern service court, his uniform coat brushed and his cap pulled straight.

The other drivers were busy hitching pairs of bays to the heavy government luggage landaus. A few looked over, no longer laughing. News of the western journey had traveled through the stables before breakfast. A hundred leagues through a swamp, fixed by Wallace with a nine-inch spanner and a clean rag, and back in time for tea.