s face seemed to be luminous. "MISS BEAUMONT," he
said, and splashed up a spray of suspicion. Some one began letting
off fireworks, chiefly Catherine wheels, down the shop, though Mr.
Hoopdriver knew it was against the rules. For it seemed that the place
they were in was a vast shop, and then Mr. Hoopdriver perceived that the
other man in brown was the shop-walker, differing from most shop-walkers
in the fact that he was lit from within as a Chinese lantern might be.
And the customer Mr. Hoopdriver was going to serve was the Young Lady
in Grey. Curious he hadn't noticed it before. She was in grey as
usual,--rationals,--and she had her bicycle leaning against the counter.
She smiled quite frankly at him, just as she had done when she had
apologised for stopping him. And her form, as she leant towards him, was
full of a sinuous grace he had never noticed before. "What can I have
the pleasure?" said Mr. Hoopdriver at once, and she said, "The Ripley
road." So he got out the Ripley road and unrolled it and showed it to
her, and she said that would do very nicely, and kept on looking at him
and smiling, and he began measuring off eight miles by means of the yard
measure on the counter, eight miles being a dress length, a rational
dress length, that is; and then the other man in brown came up and
wanted to interfere, and said Mr. Hoopdriver was a cad, besides
measuring it off too slowly. And as Mr. Hoopdriver began to measure
faster, the other man in brown said the Young Lady in Grey had been
there long enough, and that he WAS her brother, or else she would not be
travelling with him, and he suddenly whipped his arm about her waist and
made off with her. It occurred to Mr. Hoopdriver even at the moment that
this was scarcely brotherly behaviour. Of course it wasn't! The sight
of the other man gripping her so familiarly enraged him frightfully; he
leapt over the counter forthwith and gave chase. They ran round the shop
and up an iron staircase into the Keep, and so out upon the Ripley road.
For some time they kept dodging in and out of a wayside hotel with
two front doors and an inn yard. The other man could not run very fast
because he had hold of the Young Lady in Grey, but Mr. Hoopdriver was
hampered by the absurd behaviour of his legs. They would not stretch
out; they would keep going round and round as if they were on the
treadles of a wheel, so that he made the smallest steps conceivable.
This dream came to no crisis. The c