sight in the world is a man on a
bicycle, working away with his feet as hard as he possibly can, and
believing that his horse is carrying him instead of, as anyone can see,
he carrying the horse. You needn't tell me that it isn't easier to walk
in the ordinary way than to drag a great dead iron thing along with you.
It's not good sense."

"Nevertheless I can carry it a hundred miles further in a day than I can
carry myself alone. Such are the marvels of machinery. But I know that
we cut a very poor figure beside you and that magnificent creature not
that anyone will look at me whilst you are by to occupy their attention
so much more worthily."

She darted a glance at him which clouded his vision and made his heart
beat more strongly. This was an old habit of hers. She kept it up from
love of fun, having no idea of the effect it produced on more ardent
temperaments than her own. He continued hastily:

"Is Sir Charles within doors?"

"Oh, it's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of in my life," she
exclaimed. "A man that lives by himself in a place down by the Riverside
Road like a toy savings bank--don't you know the things I mean?--called
Sallust's House, says there is a right of way through our new pleasure
ground. As if anyone could have any right there after all the money we
have spent fencing it on three sides, and building up the wall by the
road, and levelling, and planting, and draining, and goodness knows what
else! And now the man says that all the common people and tramps in the
neighborhood have a right to walk across it because they are too lazy to
go round by the road. Sir Charles has gone to see the man about it. Of
course he wouldn't do as I wanted him."

"What was that?"

"Write to tell the man to mind his own business, and to say that the
first person we found attempting to trespass on our property should be
given to the police."

"Then I shall find no one at home. I beg your pardon for calling it so,
but it is the only place like home to me."

"Yes; it is so comfortable since we built the billiard room and took
away those nasty hangings in the hall. I was ever so long trying to
per--"

She was interrupted by an old laborer, who hobbled up as fast as his
rheumatism would allow him, and began to speak without further ceremony
than snatching off his cap.

"Th'ave coom to the noo groups, my lady, crowds of 'em. An' a parson
with 'em, an' a flag! Sur Chorles he don't know what to say; an' s