circles.

 

After an hour or so of drinking, these two gentlemen decided they wished to go

for an afternoon drive around the local villages - a motor car around this time

still being something of a novelty. They persuaded Mr Charles to accompany them,

and since the chauffeur was on leave at that point, enlisted my father to drive

the car.

 

Once they had set off, Mr Smith and Mr Jones, for all their being well into

their middle years, proceeded to behave like schoolboys, singing coarse songs

and making even coarser comments on all they saw from the window. Furthermore,

these gentlemen had noticed on the local map three villages in the vicinity

called Morphy, Saltash and Brigoon. Now I am not entirely sure these were the

exact names, but the point was they reminded Mr Smith and Mr Jones of the music

hall act, Murphy, Saltman and Brigid the Cat, of which you may have heard. Upon

noticing this curious coincidence, the gentlemen then gained an ambition to

visit the three villages in question - in honour, as it were, of the music hall

artistes.

 

According to Mr Charles, my father had duly driven to one village and was on the

point of entering a second when either Mr Smith or Mr J ones noticed the village

was Brigoon - that is to say the third, not the second, name of the sequence.

They demanded angrily that my father turn the car immediately so that the

villages could be visited 'in the correct order'. It so happened that this

entailed doubling back a considerable way of the route, but, so Mr Charles