I want to talk
things over with you." The girl seemed more beautiful than ever
after the night's sleep; her hair in comely dark waves from her
forehead, her ungauntleted finger-tips pink and cool. And how
decided she was! Breakfast was a nervous ceremony, conversation
fraternal but thin; the waiter overawed him, and he was cowed by
a multiplicity of forks. But she called him "Chris." They
discussed their route over his sixpenny county map for the sake
of talking, but avoided a decision in the presence of the
attendant. The five-pound note was changed for the bill, and
through Hoopdriver's determination to be quite the gentleman, the
waiter and chambermaid got half a crown each and the ostler a
florin. "'Olidays," said the ostler to himself, without
gratitude. The public mounting of the bicycles in the street was
a moment of trepidation. A policeman actually stopped and watched
them from the opposite kerb. Suppose him to come across and ask:
"Is that your bicycle, sir?" Fight? Or drop it and run? It was a
time of bewildering apprehension, too, going through the streets
of the town, so that a milk cart barely escaped destruction under
Mr. Hoopdriver's chancy wheel. That recalled him to a sense of
erratic steering, and he pulled himself together. In the lanes he
breathed freer, and a less formal conversation presently began.
"You've ridden out of Chichester in a great hurry," said Jessie.
"Well, the fact of it is, I'm worried, just a little bit. About
this machine.
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