for a coming cartage. There were thrushes in the Richmond Road, and a

lark on Putney Heath. The freshness of dew was in the air; dew or

the relics of an overnight shower glittered on the leaves and grass.

Hoopdriver had breakfasted early by Mrs. Gunn's complaisance. He wheeled

his machine up Putney Hill, and his heart sang within him. Halfway up, a

dissipated-looking black cat rushed home across the road and vanished

under a gate. All the big red-brick houses behind the variegated shrubs

and trees had their blinds down still, and he would not have changed

places with a soul in any one of them for a hundred pounds.

He had on his new brown cycling suit--a handsome Norfolk jacket thing

for 30/(sp.)--and his legs--those martyr legs--were more than consoled

by thick chequered stockings, "thin in the foot, thick in the leg," for

all they had endured. A neat packet of American cloth behind the saddle

contained his change of raiment, and the bell and the handle-bar and the

hubs and lamp, albeit a trifle freckled by wear, glittered blindingly

in the rising sunlight. And at the top of the hill, after only

one unsuccessful attempt, which, somehow, terminated on the green,

Hoopdriver mounted, and with a stately and cautious restraint in his

pace, and a dignified curvature of path, began his great Cycling Tour

along the Southern Coast.

There is only one phrase to describe his course at this stage, and that

is--voluptuous curves. He did not ride fast, he did not ride straight,

an exacting critic might say he did not ride well--but he rode

generously, opulently, using the whole road and even nibbling at the

The Wheels of Chance