e to Bert, as though
it were an entirely new fact, that Tom was singularly impervious to
ideas. In the end he put the financial issues on one side, and, making
the thing entirely a matter of fraternal affection, succeeded in
borrowing a sovereign on the security of his word of honour.

The firm of Grubb & Smallways, formerly Grubb, had indeed been
singularly unlucky in the last year or so. For many years the business
had struggled along with a flavour of romantic insecurity in a small,
dissolute-looking shop in the High Street, adorned with brilliantly
coloured advertisements of cycles, a display of bells, trouser-clips,
oil-cans, pump-clips, frame-cases, wallets, and other accessories, and
the announcement of "Bicycles on Hire," "Repairs," "Free inflation,"
"Petrol," and similar attractions. They were agents for several obscure
makes of bicycle,--two samples constituted the stock,--and occasionally
they effected a sale; they also repaired punctures and did their
best--though luck was not always on their side--with any other repairing
that was brought to them. They handled a line of cheap gramophones, and
did a little with musical boxes.

The staple of their business was, however, the letting of bicycles on
hire. It was a singular trade, obeying no known commercial or economic
principles--indeed, no principles. There was a stock of ladies' and
gentlemen's bicycles in a state of disrepair that passes description,
and these, the hiring stock, were let to unexacting and reckless people,
inexpert in the things of this world, at a nominal rate of one shilling
for the first hour and sixpence per hour afterwards. But really there
were no fixed prices, and insistent boys could get bicycles and the
thrill of danger for an hour for so low a sum as threepence, provided
they could convince Grubb that that was all they had. The saddle and
handle-bar were then sketchily adjusted by Grubb, a deposit exacted,
except in the case of familiar boys, the machine lubricated, and the
adventurer started upon his career. Usually he or she came back, but at
times, when the accident was serious, Bert or Grubb had to go out and
fetch the machine home. Hire was always charged up to the hour of return
to the shop and deducted from the deposit. It was rare that a bicycle
started out from their hands in a state of pedantic efficiency. Romantic
possibilities of accident lurked in the worn thread of the screw that
adjusted the saddle, in the precarious