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ah! blundering--"
"Your finger's bleeding," she said, abruptly.
He saw his knuckle was barked. "I didn't feel it," he said, feeling
manly.
"You don't at first. Have you any sticking-plaster? If not--" She
balanced her machine against herself. She had a little side pocket,
and she whipped out a small packet of sticking-plaster with a pair of
scissors in a sheath at the side, and cut off a generous portion. He
had a wild impulse to ask her to stick it on for him. Controlled. "Thank
you," he said.
"
Machine all right?" she asked, looking past him at the prostrate
vehicle, her hands on her handle-bar. For the first time Hoopdriver did
not feel proud of his machine.
He turned and began to pick up the fallen fabric. He looked over his
shoulder, and she was gone, turned his head over the other shoulder down
the road, and she was riding off. "ORF!" said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Well,
I'm blowed!--Talk about Slap Up!" (His aristocratic refinement rarely
adorned his speech in his private soliloquies.) His mind was whirling.
One fact was clear. A most delightful and novel human being had flashed
across his horizon and was going out of his life again. The Holiday
madness was in his blood. She looked round!
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