after awhile by George, this time.

"Don't you two fellows over-exert yourselves merely on my account," said
George.

"How do you mean?" asked Harris.

"I mean," answered George, "that where a train does happen to be going up
these hills, don't you put aside the idea of taking it for fear of
outraging my finer feelings. Personally, I am prepared to go up all
these hills in a railway train, even if it's not playing the game. I'll
square the thing with my conscience; I've been up at seven every day for
a week now, and I calculate it owes me a bit. Don't you consider me in
the matter at all."

We promised to bear this in mind, and again the ride continued in dogged
dumbness, until it was again broken by George.

"What bicycle did you say this was of yours?" asked George.

Harris told him. I forget of what particular manufacture it happened to
be; it is immaterial.

"Are you sure?" persisted George.

"Of course I am sure," answered Harris. "Why, what's the matter with
it?"

"Well, it doesn't come up to the poster," said George, "that's all."

"What poster?" asked Harris.

"The poster advertising this particular brand of cycle," explained
George. "I was looking at one on a hoarding in Sloane Street only a day
or two before we started. A man was riding this make of machine, a man
with a banner in his hand: he wasn't doing any work, that was clear as
daylight; he was just sitting on the thing and drinking in the air. The
cycle was going of its own accord, and going well. This thing of yours
leaves all the work to me. It is a lazy brute of a machine; if you don't
shove, it simply does nothing: I should complain about it, if I were
you."

When one comes to think of it, few bicycles do realise the poster. On
only one poster that I can recollect have I seen the rider represented as
doing any work. But then this man was being pursued by a bull. In
ordinary cases the object of the artist is to convince the hesitating
neophyte that the sport of bicycling consists in sitting on a luxurious
saddle, and being moved rapidly in the direction you wish to go by unseen
heavenly powers.

Generally speaking, the rider is a lady, and then one feels that, for
perfect bodily rest combined with entire freedom from mental anxiety,
slumber upon a water-bed cannot compare with bicycle-riding upon a hilly
road. No fairy travelling on a summer cloud could take things more
easily than does the bicycle girl, according to th