be afraid," said Jimmy, "they won't take this one from me;
and yet I hope, in a few years' time, to see it all over the place."

"You hope to have it taken from you in a few years only, eh? But why?"

"For all the world to profit by it."

"All the world on the back-wheel!" protested Lily, who was always thinking
bikes. "Then what will become of the artistes?"

"In a few years, Lily, people won't go about on wheels," said Jimmy
jokingly.

"What will they do then?"

"They'll fly!"

Lily would have burst out laughing, in other circumstances; but they had
now reached the stage. The iron curtain was down. She looked round with
scared eyes for something out of the common. Jimmy, after making sure that
they were quite alone, walked up to the monster's cage, slid back the door
...

The aerobike, with wings wide open, seemed to loom out of the darkness.

"My!" cried Lily. "It's a bird! So that was your brain-work in Berlin and
in ... What is it?"

It was, in any case, a strange creature, with two inclined planes, one on
either side, that looked like wings; and, at the back, it showed a
screw-propeller sticking up in the air, like a tail. The whole thing
rested on two wheels.

"And it's a bike, too! I knew it!" cried Lily, clapping her hands. "Well
done, Jimmy! And do you want me to get up on it? Come along! Just wait
till I take my hat off," she went on, drawing out the hat-pins from under
her big feathers.

"Not so fast!" said Jimmy, laughing. "Keep calm! We'll start next week.
There are a good many little things to make sure of first; and then I must
put up a cable in case of a fall."

"I don't care a hang for a fall," cried Lily, immensely excited. "You'll
soon see if I'm afraid!"

"Be serious, Lily. Listen to me," replied Jimmy. "Yes, you will have to
stand on the back-wheel, but not to ride round the stage. You will have to
start up at full speed and then go up and up, straight up, into space and
then shoot out through a hole which they are making in the roof."

"Yes," said Lily, "I saw. . . . My, that makes a good distance! And, when
I'm through the hole, what do I do up there? Go on...!"

"I'll explain all that to you," said Jimmy.

"Dive into the street, eh?" asked Lily, in her Spartan voice. "Well, I
don't care! Anything! I'll do anything! And I'll show them," she added, to
herself, "if you can do _that_ through your gentlemen friends!"

But she calmed herself: after all, she was going to top the b