This
dream came to no crisis. The chase seemed to last an interminable
time, and all kinds of people, heathkeepers, shopmen, policemen,
the old man in the Keep, the angry man in drab, the barmaid at
the Unicorn, men with flying-machines, people playing billiards
in the doorways, silly, headless figures, stupid cocks and hens
encumbered with parcels and umbrellas and waterproofs, people
carrying bedroom candles, and such-like riffraff, kept getting in
his way and annoying him, although he sounded his electric bell,
and said, "Wonderful, wonderful!" at every corner....
HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WENT TO HASLEMERE
XIII
There was some little delay in getting Mr. Hoopdriver's
breakfast, so that after all he was not free to start out of
Guildford until just upon the stroke of nine. He wheeled his
machine from the High Street in some perplexity. He did not know
whether this young lady, who had seized hold of his imagination
so strongly, and her unfriendly and possibly menacing brother,
were ahead of him or even now breakfasting somewhere in
Guildford. In the former case he might loiter as he chose; in the
latter he must hurry, and possibly take refuge in branch roads.
It occurred to him as being in some obscure way strategic, that
he would leave Guildford not by the obvious Portsmouth road, but
by the road running through Shalford. Along this pleasant shady
way he felt suffficiently secure to resume his exercises in
riding with one hand off the handles, and in staring over his
shoulder.
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