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of a funeral.
Meanwhile the roads converged. She was looking at him. She was flushed,
a little thin, and had very bright eyes. Her red lips fell apart. She
may have been riding hard, but it looked uncommonly like a faint smile.
And the things were--yes!--RATIONALS! Suddenly an impulse to bolt from
the situation became clamorous. Mr. Hoopdriver pedalled convulsively,
intending to pass her. He jerked against some tin thing on the road, and
it flew up between front wheel and mud-guard. He twisted round towards
her. Had the machine a devil?
At that supreme moment it came across him that he would have done wiser
to dismount. He gave a frantic 'whoop' and tried to get round, then, as
he seemed falling over, he pulled the handles straight again and to the
left by an instinctive motion, and shot behind her hind wheel, missing
her by a hair's breadth. The pavement kerb awaited him. He tried to
recover, and found himself jumped up on the pavement and riding squarely
at a neat wooden paling. He struck this with a terrific impact and shot
forward off his saddle into a clumsy entanglement. Then he began to
tumble over sideways, and completed the entire figure in a sitting
position on the gravel, with his feet between the fork and the stay of
the machine. The concussion on the gravel shook his entire being. He
remained in that position, wishing that he had broken his neck, wishing
even more heartily that he had never been born. The glory of life had
departed. Bloomin' Dook, indeed! These unwomanly women!
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