ntil they met a little old bearded don
on a bicycle. Then some misunderstanding arose between Benham and the
horse, and the little bearded don was driven into the narrow pavement
and had to get off hastily. He made no comment, but his face became like
a gargoyle. "Sorry," said Benham, and gave his mind to the corner. There
was some difficulty about whether they were to turn to the right or the
left, but at last Benham, it seemed, carried his point, and they went
along the narrow street, past the grey splendours of King's, and rather
in the middle of the way.

Prothero considered the beast in front of him, and how proud and
disrespectful a horse in a dogcart can seem to those behind it!
Moreover, unaccustomed as he was to horses, he was struck by the strong
resemblance a bird's-eye view of a horse bears to a fiddle, a fiddle
with devil's ears.

"Of course," said Prothero, "this isn't a trotter."

"I couldn't get a trotter," said Benham.

"I thought I would try this sort of thing before I tried a trotter," he
added.

And then suddenly came disaster.

There was a butcher's cart on the right, and Benham, mistrusting the
intelligence of his steed, insisted upon an excessive amplitude of
clearance. He did not reckon with the hand-barrow on his left, piled
up with dirty plates from the lunch of Trinity Hall. It had been left
there; its custodian was away upon some mysterious errand. Heaven knows
why Trinity Hall exhibited the treasures of its crockery thus stained
and deified in the Cambridge streets. But it did--for Benham's and
Prothero's undoing. Prothero saw the great wheel over which he was
poised entangle itself with the little wheel of the barrow. "God!"
he whispered, and craned, fascinated. The little wheel was manifestly
intrigued beyond all self-control by the great wheel; it clung to it, it
went before it, heedless of the barrow, of which it was an inseparable
part. The barrow came about with an appearance of unwillingness, it
locked against the great wheel; it reared itself towards Prothero and
began, smash, smash, smash, to shed its higher plates. It was clear
that Benham was grappling with a crisis upon a basis of inadequate
experience. A number of people shouted haphazard things. Then, too late,
the barrow had persuaded the little wheel to give up its fancy for the
great wheel, and there was an enormous crash.

"Whoa!" cried Benham. "Whoa!" but also, unfortunately, he sawed hard at
the horse's mouth.