V. THE SHAMEFUL EPISODE OF THE YOUNG LADY IN GREY

Now you must understand that Mr. Hoopdriver was not one of your fast

young men. If he had been King Lemuel, he could not have profited more

by his mother's instructions. He regarded the feminine sex as something

to bow to and smirk at from a safe distance. Years of the intimate

remoteness of a counter leave their mark upon a man. It was an adventure

for him to take one of the Young Ladies of the establishment to church

on a Sunday. Few modern young men could have merited less the epithet

Dorg." But I have thought at times that his machine may have had

something of the blade in its metal. Decidedly it was a machine with a

past. Mr. Hoopdriver had bought it second-hand from Hare's in Putney,

and Hare said it had had several owners. Second-hand was scarcely the

word for it, and Elare was mildly puzzled that he should be selling such

an antiquity. He said it was perfectly sound, if a little old-fashioned,

but he was absolutely silent about its moral character. It may even have

begun its career with a poet, say, in his glorious youth. It may have

been the bicycle of a Really Bad Man. No one who has ever ridden a cycle

of any kind but will witness that the things are unaccountably prone to

pick up bad habits--and keep them.

It is undeniable that it became convulsed with the most violent emotions

directly the Young Lady in Grey appeared. It began an absolutely

unprecedented Wabble--unprecedented so far as Hoopdriver's experience

went. It "showed off"--the most decadent sinuosity. It left a track like

one of Beardsley's feathers. He suddenly realised, too, that his cap was

The Wheels of Chance