So Tom took his goods out himself, and sought employers for
Bert who did not know of this strain of poetry in his nature. And Bert
touched the fringe of a number of trades in succession--draper's porter,
chemist's boy, doctor's page, junior assistant gas-fitter, envelope
addresser, milk-cart assistant, golf caddie, and at last helper in a
bicycle shop. Here, apparently, he found the progressive quality his
nature had craved. His employer was a pirate-souled young man named
Grubb, with a black-smeared face by day, and a music-hall side in the
evening, who dreamt of a patent lever chain; and it seemed to Bert that
he was the perfect model of a gentleman of spirit. He hired out quite
the dirtiest and unsafest bicycles in the whole south of England, and
conducted the subsequent discussions with astonishing verve. Bert and
he settled down very well together. Bert lived in, became almost a trick
rider--he could ride bicycles for miles that would have come to pieces
instantly under you or me--took to washing his face after business, and
spent his surplus money upon remarkable ties and collars, cigarettes,
and shorthand classes at the Bun Hill Institute.

He would go round to Tom at times, and look and talk so brilliantly
that Tom and Jessie, who both had a natural tendency to be respectful to
anybody or anything, looked up to him immensely.

"He's a go-ahead chap, is Bert," said Tom. "He knows a thing or two."

"Let's hope he don't know too much," said Jessica, who had a fine sense
of limitations.

"It's go-ahead Times," said Tom. "Noo petaters, and English at that;
we'll be having 'em in March if things go on as they do go. I never see
such Times. See his tie last night?"

"It wasn't suited to him, Tom. It was a gentleman's tie. He wasn't up to
it--not the rest of him, It wasn't becoming"...

Then presently Bert got a cyclist's suit, cap, badge, and all; and
to see him and Grubb going down to Brighton (and back)--heads
down, handle-bars down, backbones curved--was a revelation in the
possibilities of the Smallways blood.

Go-ahead Times!

Old Smallways would sit over the fire mumbling of the greatness of other
days, of old Sir Peter, who drove his coach to Brighton and back in
eight-and-twenty hours, of old Sir Peter's white top-hats, of Lady Bone,
who never set foot to ground except to walk in the garden, of the great,
prize-fights at Crawley. He talked of pink and pig-skin breeches, of
foxes at Ring's Bottom, where