d be."

"I believe you would," said Mr. Hoopdriver, admiring her. "You're plucky
enough--goodness knows."

Discovering suddenly that she was standing, he, too, rose and picked up
her machine. She took it and wheeled it into the road. Then he took his
own. He paused, regarding it. "I say!" said he. "How'd this bike look,
now, if it was enamelled grey?" She looked over her shoulder at his
grave face. "Why try and hide it in that way?"

"It was jest a passing thought," said Mr. Hoopdriver, airily. "Didn't
MEAN anything, you know."

As they were riding on to Havant it occurred to Mr. Hoopdriver in a
transitory manner that the interview had been quite other than his
expectation. But that was the way with everything in Mr. Hoopdriver's
experience. And though his Wisdom looked grave within him, and Caution
was chinking coins, and an ancient prejudice in favour of Property shook
her head, something else was there too, shouting in his mind to drown
all these saner considerations, the intoxicating thought of riding
beside Her all to-day, all to-morrow, perhaps for other days after that.
Of talking to her familiarly, being brother of all her slender strength
and freshness, of having a golden, real, and wonderful time beyond all
his imaginings. His old familiar fancyings gave place to anticipations
as impalpable and fluctuating and beautiful as the sunset of a summer
day.

At Havant he took an opportunity to purchase, at small hairdresser's in
the main street, a toothbrush, a pair of nail scissors, and a little
bottle of stuff to darken the moustache, an article the shopman
introduced to his attention, recommended highly, and sold in the
excitement of the occasion.

XXIX. THE UNEXPECTED ANECDOTE OF THE LION

They rode on to Cosham and lunched lightly but expensively there. Jessie
went out and posted her letter to her school friend. Then the green
height of Portsdown Hill tempted them, and leaving their machines in the
village they clambered up the slope to the silent red-brick fort that
crowned it. Thence they had a view of Portsmouth and its cluster of
sister towns, the crowded narrows of the harbour, the Solent and the
Isle of Wight like a blue cloud through the hot haze. Jessie by some
miracle had become a skirted woman in the Cosham inn. Mr. Hoopdriver
lounged gracefully on the turf, smoked a Red Herring cigarette, and
lazily regarded the fortified towns that spread like a map away there,
the inner line of defenc