ark was need not concern us. It was
a casual piece of such satire as Strephon delights in. Should you be
curious, dear lady, as to its nature, you have merely to dress yourself
in a really modern cycling costume, get one of the feeblest-looking
of your men to escort you, and ride out, next Saturday evening, to any
public house where healthy, homely people gather together. Then you
will hear quite a lot of the kind of thing Mr. Hoopdriver heard. More,
possibly, than you will desire.

The remark, I must add, implicated Mr. Hoopdriver. It indicated an
entire disbelief in his social standing. At a blow, it shattered all
the gorgeous imaginative fabric his mind had been rejoicing in. All that
foolish happiness vanished like a dream. And there was nothing to show
for it, as there is nothing to show for any spiteful remark that has
ever been made. Perhaps the man who said the thing had a gleam of
satisfaction at the idea of taking a complacent-looking fool down a peg,
but it is just as possible he did not know at the time that his stray
shot had hit. He had thrown it as a boy throws a stone at a bird. And it
not only demolished a foolish, happy conceit, but it wounded. It touched
Jessie grossly.

She did not hear it, he concluded from her subsequent bearing; but
during the supper they had in the little private dining-room, though
she talked cheerfully, he was preoccupied. Whiffs of indistinct
conversation, and now and then laughter, came in from the inn parlor
through the pelargoniums in the open window. Hoopdriver felt it must
all be in the same strain,--at her expense and his. He answered her
abstractedly. She was tired, she said, and presently went to her room.
Mr. Hoopdriver, in his courtly way, opened the door for her and bowed
her out. He stood listening and fearing some new offence as she went
upstairs, and round the bend where the barometer hung beneath the
stuffed birds. Then he went back to the room, and stood on the hearthrug
before the paper fireplace ornament. "Cads!" he said in a scathing
undertone, as a fresh burst of laughter came floating in. All through
supper he had been composing stinging repartee, a blistering speech of
denunciation to be presently delivered. He would rate them as a nobleman
should: "Call themselves Englishmen, indeed, and insult a woman!" he
would say; take the names and addresses perhaps, threaten to speak to
the Lord of the Manor, promise to let them hear from him again, and so
out wi