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XII. THE DREAMS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER
In spite of the drawn blinds and the darkness, you have just seen Mr.
Hoopdriver's face peaceful in its beauty sleep in the little, plain
bedroom at the very top of the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern at Guildford.
That was before midnight. As the night progressed he was disturbed by
dreams.
After your first day of cycling one dream is inevitable. A memory of
motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they
seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles
that change and grow; you ride down steeples and staircases and over
precipices; you hover in horrible suspense over inhabited towns, vainly
seeking for a brake your hand cannot find, to save you from a headlong
fall; you plunge into weltering rivers, and rush helplessly at monstrous
obstacles. Anon Mr. Hoopdriver found himself riding out of the darkness
of non-existence, pedalling Ezekiel's Wheels across the Weald of Surrey,
jolting over the hills and smashing villages in his course, while the
other man in brown cursed and swore at him and shouted to stop his
career. There was the Putney heath-keeper, too, and the man in drab
raging at him. He felt an awful fool, a--what was it?--a juggins,
ah!--a Juggernaut. The villages went off one after another with a soft,
squashing noise. He did not see the Young Lady in Grey, but he knew she
was looking at his back. He dared not look round. Where the devil was
the brake? It must have fallen off. And the bell? Right in front of him
was Guildford. He tried to shout and warn the town to get out of the
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