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anyhow!" you hear; and sometimes, and that too often for my liking, he
looks irritable and hopeless. "I know," he says, "I know. It's over
and done. It isn't IN me. You ain't man enough, Hoopdriver. Look at yer
silly hands!... Oh, my God!" and a gust of passion comes upon him and he
rides furiously for a space.
Sometimes again his face softens. "Anyhow, if I'm not to see her--she's
going to lend me books," he thinks, and gets such comfort as he can.
Then again; "Books! What's books?" Once or twice triumphant memories of
the earlier incidents nerve his face for a while. "I put the ky-bosh on
HIS little game," he remarks. "I DID that," and one might even call him
happy in these phases. And, by-the-bye, the machine, you notice, has
been enamel-painted grey and carries a sonorous gong.
This figure passes through Basingstoke and Bagshot, Staines, Hampton,
and Richmond. At last, in Putney High Street, glowing with the warmth of
an August sunset and with all the 'prentice boys busy shutting up shop,
and the work girls going home, and the shop folks peeping abroad, and
the white 'buses full of late clerks and city folk rumbling home to
their dinners, we part from him. He is back. To-morrow, the early
rising, the dusting, and drudgery, begin again--but with a difference,
with wonderful memories and still more wonderful desires and ambitions
replacing those discrepant dreams.
He turns out of the High Street at the corner, dismounts with a sigh,
and pushes his machine through the gates of the Antrobus stable yard, as
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