f the ages! I'm nothing. I know nothing. I can't do
anything--sketch a bit. Why wasn't I made an artist?

"Beastly cheap, after all, this suit does look, in the sunshine."

"No good, Hoopdriver. Anyhow, you don't tell yourself any lies about it.
Lovers ain't your game,--anyway. But there's other things yet. You can
help the young lady, and you will--I suppose she'll be going home--And
that business of the bicycle's to see to, too, my man. FORWARD,
Hoopdriver! If you ain't a beauty, that's no reason why you should stop
and be copped, is it?"

And having got back in this way to a gloomy kind of self-satisfaction,
he had another attempt at his hair preparatory to leaving his room
and hurrying on breakfast, for an early departure. While breakfast was
preparing he wandered out into South Street and refurnished himself with
the elements of luggage again. "No expense to be spared," he murmured,
disgorging the half-sovereign.

XXVIII. THE DEPARTURE FROM CHICHESTER

He caused his 'sister' to be called repeatedly, and when she came down,
explained with a humorous smile his legal relationship to the bicycle
in the yard. "Might be disagreeable, y' know." His anxiety was obvious
enough. "Very well," she said (quite friendly); "hurry breakfast, and
we'll ride out. I want to talk things over with you." The girl seemed
more beautiful than ever after the night's sleep; her hair in comely
dark waves from her forehead, her ungauntleted finger-tips pink and
cool. And how decided she was! Breakfast was a nervous ceremony,
conversation fraternal but thin; the waiter overawed him, and he was
cowed by a multiplicity of forks. But she called him "Chris." They
discussed their route over his sixpenny county map for the sake of
talking, but avoided a decision in the presence of the attendant. The
five-pound note was changed for the bill, and through Hoopdriver's
determination to be quite the gentleman, the waiter and chambermaid got
half a crown each and the ostler a florin. "'Olidays," said the ostler
to himself, without gratitude. The public mounting of the bicycles in
the street was a moment of trepidation. A policeman actually stopped and
watched them from the opposite kerb. Suppose him to come across and ask:
"Is that your bicycle, sir?" Fight? Or drop it and run? It was a time of
bewildering apprehension, too, going through the streets of the town,
so that a milk cart barely escaped destruction under Mr. Hoopdriver's
chancy wheel.