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for a thin chalky dust lay upon the road, and the track of her tire was
milled like a shilling, and his was a chequered ribbon along the way.
So they rode by Cobden's monument and through the prettiest of villages,
until at last the downs rose steeply ahead. There they stopped awhile at
the only inn in the place, and Mr. Hoopdriver took up a position which
commanded the inn door, and mopped his face and thirsted and smoked a
Red Herring cigarette. They remained in the inn for some time. A number
of chubby innocents returning home from school, stopped and formed a
line in front of him, and watched him quietly but firmly for the space
of ten minutes or so. "Go away," said he, and they only seemed quietly
interested. He asked them all their names then, and they answered
indistinct murmurs. He gave it up at last and became passive on his
gate, and so at length they tired of him.
The couple under observation occupied the inn so long that Mr.
Hoopdriver at the thought of their possible employment hungered as well
as thirsted. Clearly, they were lunching. It was a cloudless day, and
the sun at the meridian beat down upon the top of Mr. Hoopdriver's head,
a shower bath of sunshine, a huge jet of hot light. It made his head
swim. At last they emerged, and the other man in brown looked back and
saw him. They rode on to the foot of the down, and dismounting began
to push tediously up that long nearly vertical ascent of blinding white
road, Mr. Hoopdriver hesitated. It might take them twenty minutes to
mount that. Beyond was empty downland perhaps for miles. He decided to
return to the inn and snatch a hasty meal.
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