paid thirty pounds premium--thirty pounds
down to have me made THIS. The G.V. promised to teach me the trade, and
he never taught me anything but to be a Hand. It's the way they do with
draper's apprentices. If every swindler was locked up--well, you'd have
nowhere to buy tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns and
those chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm not such muck that I might
not have been better--with teaching. I wonder what the chaps who sneer
and laugh at such as me would be if they'd been fooled about as I've
been. At twenty-three--it's a long start."

He looked up with a wintry smile, a sadder and wiser Hoopdriver indeed
than him of the glorious imaginings. "It's YOU done this," he said.
"You're real. And it sets me thinking what I really am, and what I might
have been. Suppose it was all different--"

"MAKE it different."

"How?"

"WORK. Stop playing at life. Face it like a man."

"Ah!" said Hoopdriver, glancing at her out of the corners of his eyes.
"And even then--"

"No! It's not much good. I'm beginning too late."

And there, in blankly thoughtful silence, that conversation ended.

XXXVII. IN THE NEW FOREST

At Ringwood they lunched, and Jessie met with a disappointment. There
was no letter for her at the post office. Opposite the hotel, The
Chequered Career, was a machine shop with a conspicuously second-hand
Marlborough Club tandem tricycle displayed in the window, together with
the announcement that bicycles and tricycles were on hire within. The
establishment was impressed on Mr. Hoopdriver's mind by the proprietor's
action in coming across the road and narrowly inspecting their machines.
His action revived a number of disagreeable impressions, but, happily,
came to nothing. While they were still lunching, a tall clergyman,
with a heated face, entered the room and sat down at the table next to
theirs. He was in a kind of holiday costume; that is to say, he had a
more than usually high collar, fastened behind and rather the worse for
the weather, and his long-tail coat had been replaced by a black jacket
of quite remarkable brevity. He had faded brown shoes on his feet, his
trouser legs were grey with dust, and he wore a hat of piebald straw
in the place of the customary soft felt. He was evidently socially
inclined.

"A most charming day, sir," he said, in a ringing tenor.

"Charming," said Mr. Hoopdriver, over a portion of pie.

"You are, I perceive, cycling th