just as though she was only a Larky Girl. It was unforgivable. He
always WAS a fool. You could tell from her manner she didn't think him a
gentleman. One glance, and she seemed to look clear through him and all
his presence. What rot it was venturing to speak to a girl like that!
With her education she was bound to see through him at once.

How nicely she spoke too! nice clear-cut words! She made him feel what
slush his own accent was. And that last silly remark. What was it? 'Not
being the other gentleman, you know!' No point in it. And 'GENTLEMAN!'
What COULD she be thinking of him?

But really the Young Lady in Grey had dismissed Hoopdriver from her
thoughts almost before he had vanished round the corner. She had thought
no ill of him. His manifest awe and admiration of her had given her not
an atom of offence. But for her just now there were weightier things
to think about, things that would affect all the rest of her life. She
continued slowly walking her machine Londonward. Presently she stopped.
"Oh! Why DOESN'T he come?" she said, and stamped her foot petulantly.
Then, as if in answer, coming down the hill among the trees, appeared
the other man in brown, dismounted and wheeling his machine.

IX. HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WAS HAUNTED

As Mr. Hoopdriver rode swaggering along the Ripley road, it came to him,
with an unwarrantable sense of comfort, that he had seen the last of the
Young Lady in Grey. But the ill-concealed bladery of the machine, the
present machinery of Fate, the deus ex machina, so to speak, was against
him. The bicycle, torn from this attractive young woman, grew heavier
and heavier, and continually more unsteady. It seemed a choice between
stopping at Ripley or dying in the flower of his days. He went into the
Unicorn, after propping his machine outside the door, and, as he cooled
down and smoked his Red Herring cigarette while the cold meat was
getting ready, he saw from the window the Young Lady in Grey and the
other man in brown, entering Ripley.

They filled him with apprehension by looking at the house which
sheltered him, but the sight of his bicycle, propped in a drunk and
incapable attitude against the doorway, humping its rackety mud-guard
and leering at them with its darkened lantern eye, drove them away--so
it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver--to the spacious swallow of the Golden
Dragon. The young lady was riding very slowly, but the other man in
brown had a bad puncture and was wheelin