ined, may Heaven
forgive us both!) Nor will we follow this adventurous young lady of ours
back to her home at Surbiton, to her new struggle against Widgery and
Mrs. Milton combined. For, as she will presently hear, that devoted man
has got his reward. For her, also, your sympathies are invited.

The rest of this great holiday, too--five days there are left of it--is
beyond the limits of our design. You see fitfully a slender figure in
a dusty brown suit and heather mixture stockings, and brown shoes not
intended to be cycled in, flitting Londonward through Hampshire and
Berkshire and Surrey, going economically--for excellent reasons. Day by
day he goes on, riding fitfully and for the most part through bye-roads,
but getting a few miles to the north-eastward every day. He is a
narrow-chested person, with a nose hot and tanned at the bridge with
unwonted exposure, and brown, red-knuckled fists. A musing expression
sits upon the face of this rider, you observe. Sometimes he whistles
noiselessly to himself, sometimes he speaks aloud, "a juiced good try,
anyhow!" you hear; and sometimes, and that too often for my liking, he
looks irritable and hopeless. "I know," he says, "I know. It's over
and done. It isn't IN me. You ain't man enough, Hoopdriver. Look at yer
silly hands!... Oh, my God!" and a gust of passion comes upon him and he
rides furiously for a space.

Sometimes again his face softens. "Anyhow, if I'm not to see her--she's
going to lend me books," he thinks, and gets such comfort as he can.
Then again; "Books! What's books?" Once or twice triumphant memories of
the earlier incidents nerve his face for a while. "I put the ky-bosh on
HIS little game," he remarks. "I DID that," and one might even call him
happy in these phases. And, by-the-bye, the machine, you notice, has
been enamel-painted grey and carries a sonorous gong.

This figure passes through Basingstoke and Bagshot, Staines, Hampton,
and Richmond. At last, in Putney High Street, glowing with the warmth of
an August sunset and with all the 'prentice boys busy shutting up shop,
and the work girls going home, and the shop folks peeping abroad, and
the white 'buses full of late clerks and city folk rumbling home to
their dinners, we part from him. He is back. To-morrow, the early
rising, the dusting, and drudgery, begin again--but with a difference,
with wonderful memories and still more wonderful desires and ambitions
replacing those discrepant dreams.

H