too late! She cannot forbear from laughing delightedly as thegallant fellow is borne off by a flying columnof florid young men in football jerseys, who, singing, Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set, God —! carry all before them across one fifth of the world’s land, with its populations of theosophical Hindoos, jolly Hottentots, lazy Lascars, sullen Malays and woolly headed blackamoors all four hundred million of ’em! But how many. . Audrey wonders. . Empires are there in the Empire? Bert would know. . The stretched domes and finials of this one fall on the heads of the crowd, the ash of Vesuvius. In the sunlight beyond there is the jig of bunting and the glare of a band limbering up — with an oom-p’poom-poom a staccato march begins and the white glove of the conductor waves the smell of frying potatoes. . straight to me. Next a gratified spasm passes through the crowd, See — Stan is beside her — iss a two-cylinder Siddeley they’ve got. . He’s said this several times already, yet Audrey knows that it isn’t the motor car that interests him, it’s the ortommoton that will conduct it from Shepherd’s Bush Green to Temple Bar, its clockwork muss be woun’ up right tight. The motor car is enclosed by ropes and a rope gangway leads to it from the doors of the Empire, doors that waver on their brass hinges, then swing open to reveal, Enig-ma-relle! Not so much a shout as a wave, Enigmanigmanigmar’r’r’ellle, that ripples across their jelly faces — and at once Audrey is plungèd into egrimony. True, the Man of Steel does his best to move in a mechanical fashion, cranking up right arm and right leg, then winching them down to the step below, but, much as the flesh-and-blood spectators push and pull at Audrey, so she remotely senses the muscles and tendons pushing and pulling inside the shiny tubing of his suit. Besides, who could be fooled by that metal visor, below which an irresolute chin is plastered with thick stage paint. A section of the crowd is bawling counter to the band, All the girls loved Ber-tie when ’e adda motor car! as Enigmarelle stilt-walks along the gangway to his waiting conveyance. That’s the man what invenned it! Stan bellows in her ear: Fred Ireland! Ireland is clean-shaven with spectacles that ’e fancies make ’im look scientifical. He prods Enigmarelle between his shoulder blades, causing the Man of Steel to unlatch the motor car’s door, then climb jerkily up on to its dickey. Acknowledging the Huzzah! of the crowd with an exaggerated bow, Ireland takes his seat behind his clockwork chauffeur. ’Ow d’you fink ’e works, Ordree? Stan brightly delights — how can he believe this fakery? The Ireland chappantomimically fiddling between the mechanical man’s shoulder blades, Enigmarelle extending his stiff arms to the steering wheel, the mechanic in the Norfolk jacket yanking the hand-crank ta-ra-ra-round and ta-ra-ra-round and ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay —! The sharp crack of the engine firing flutters hankies and sends shopgirls swooning, and their sweethearts seize the opportunity to snatch a feel. The Man of Steel tilts at the waist, pulls one lever up and pushes a second down. Oh my. . Oh my! Close beside Audrey a chit of a girl is allowing such liberties that looking down she sees her dingy underthings, Lottie Collins ’as no draw-ers, Will yer kindly lend ’er your-ers . .Boots stomp to the oom-pah-pah! The organ-grinder has done his job and his instrument is alive with its own music, its pistons drumming, its steel-shod clogs hoofing it. Self-important stewards swagger away the ropes as the mechanic lopes up beside the inventor — the crowd parts as the motor car starts, and, sceptical as she may be, Audrey cannot deny that it’s a bang-up-to-date show, what with the band on its stand all done up with swags and streamers having achieved its own infernal combustion — Men of Brass whose red necks. . bullfrogs. . red and gold frogging. Stan, already a head taller than his elder sister, still cannot bear his poor vantage — he leaps, he pirouettes, he leans into the railings and, grasping a spear point in each hand, hops tentatively until Audrey says, Don’t be daft, you’ll get one up yer jacksie! Still, he’s beside himself, D-don’t yer see, ’e’s drivin’ it, ’e’s truly drivin’ it! Audrey sees nothing of the sort, she sees Ireland the showman throw a handful of farthings and barley sugar to the crowd, she sees the automaton wrestle very bodily with the steering wheel as the Siddeley accelerates round the green and proceeds east, flickering behind the railings, trailing pelting boys and swelling smoke. P’raps, Audrey thinks, there’s no need fer deceivin’ at such a speed. P’raps, Ireland cares nothing for the good opinion of heather sellers or railway navvies in soiled dungarees, p’raps he thinks he can’t be seen shouting in Enigma-wotsit’s tin ear from where she stands in the shadow of the Empire, p’raps — but, Hush now! These things are far too sure that you should dream, lest they appear as things that seem . .Such as, the Man of Steel turned on her very own lathe. She discovered it all set up that morning to do the job: six operations for each of his limbs. Engage the shaft, wheel in the cutter, cut the threads — internal and external — cut the recesses. Six operations for each of his limbs — yet I only get to see his right arm. Others get the left arm, still further along the line of lathes there are more expert girls who braze the legs with oxyacetylene torches in a blaze of flame, and beyond them are the munitionettes who operate turret lathes, lowering the headstock down carefully until it bores into the block with a ferocious whine, then raising it up again to the point where the mechanism ejects a new canister, empty and oily, and awaiting a brain — we never see these, any more than we see his privates . .These, Audrey believes, must be machined in a secret workshop concealed in one of the Danger Buildings — p’raps No. 4– where men too old or too lame for the front pride themselves on the steel pintles they turn on their lathes, each one screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeching into existence with ready-made hair of swarf. When Audrey is at her lathe, she gauges every fifth right arm and turns it upside down so’s he can be checked — checked as she was on her first day: sent down from the Labour Exchange at Plumstead, having signed on for three years or the duration. Coming through Beresford Square with all that carry-on, the blackamoors an’ wogs flogging scarves an’ such offa the ground, an’ cockatoos in cages, an’ all manner of pies, an’ whelk stalls, an’ other eats, an’ the ’buses pulling up with men dangling right offa the stair rails in bunches. — That first day Audrey and Gracie come straight in by No. 1 Gate, under the indifferent gaze of gunners cast in iron — one of the police sentries. . ’e only takes my green ticket and salutes me! What larks! A male-bloody-biped kowtowing to me! Not so the Lady Superintendent a Vesta Victoria — to put it mildly, with a Unionist glint in her ’ow-now-brown-cow eyes