IX. HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WAS HAUNTED

As Mr. Hoopdriver rode swaggering along the Ripley road, it came to him,

with an unwarrantable sense of comfort, that he had seen the last of the

Young Lady in Grey. But the ill-concealed bladery of the machine, the

present machinery of Fate, the deus ex machina, so to speak, was against

him. The bicycle, torn from this attractive young woman, grew heavier

and heavier, and continually more unsteady. It seemed a choice between

stopping at Ripley or dying in the flower of his days. He went into the

Unicorn, after propping his machine outside the door, and, as he cooled

down and smoked his Red Herring cigarette while the cold meat was

getting ready, he saw from the window the Young Lady in Grey and the

other man in brown, entering Ripley.

They filled him with apprehension by looking at the house which

sheltered him, but the sight of his bicycle, propped in a drunk and

incapable attitude against the doorway, humping its rackety mud-guard

and leering at them with its darkened lantern eye, drove them away--so

it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver--to the spacious swallow of the Golden

Dragon. The young lady was riding very slowly, but the other man in

brown had a bad puncture and was wheeling his machine. Mr. Hoopdriver

noted his flaxen moustache, his aquiline nose, his rather bent

shoulders, with a sudden, vivid dislike.

The maid at the Unicorn is naturally a pleasant girl, but she is jaded

by the incessant incidence of cyclists, and Hoopdriver's mind, even as

The Wheels of Chance