James finally comes to Heston Grange to take Helen on a date. He has grand plans for a dinner dance at the fanciest hotel north of London, but one disaster strikes after another, leaving James looking and feeling like a buffoon. After a misunderstanding about whether or not he’s staying at the hotel, all his confidence crumbles, and he goes through the motions for the rest of the date, but his heart is not in it anymore.

When the brakes on the Austin fail, James has a series of narrow escapes from disaster. Siegfried keeps forgetting to get the car repaired—that is, until he drives it, nearly ends up in a serious collision, and scolds James for not telling him how bad the brake situation was.

James has another narrow escape when visiting the house of a pleasant man mostly interested in talking to him about football. He is left alone with his Great Dane and her pups. The Great Dane reacts poorly to a stranger in her territory, and James must fend her off with an old chair. Even with his lion-tamer act, he gets a nasty bite on his left thigh. Siegfried remarks on how close he was to losing some very important anatomy.