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
wheeling his machine. Mr. Hoopdriver noted his flaxen moustache,
his aquiline nose, his rather bent shoulders, with a sudden,
vivid dislike.
The maid at the Unicorn is naturally a pleasant girl, but she is
jaded by the incessant incidence of cyclists, and Hoopdriver's
mind, even as he conversed with her in that cultivated voice of
his--of the weather, of the distance from London, and of the
excellence of the Ripley road--wandered to the incomparable
freshness and brilliance of the Young Lady in Grey. As he sat at
meat he kept turning his head to the window to see what signs
there were of that person, but the face of the Golden Dragon
displayed no appreciation of the delightful morsel it had
swallowed.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57