"Now for this horrid puncture!" were the first words I was to hear fall from her lips. She sought for the wound in the india-rubber with growing bewilderment. "Goodness!" was her next exclamation, "why, there's nothing wrong with it. Can I have been dreaming?" "I hope your dreams have been pleasanter than that," I ventured at this moment to stammer, rising, a startling apparition, from my ambush behind a mound of brambles; and before she had time to take in the situation I added that I hoped she'd excuse my little pleasantry, and told her how I had noticed her and the wounded bicycle, et cetera, et cetera, as the reader can well imagine, without giving me the trouble of writing it all out. She was sweetness itself on the instant. "Excuse you!" she said, "I should think so. Who wouldn't? You can't tell the load you've taken off my mind. I'm sure I must have groaned in my sleep--for I confess I cried myself to sleep over it." "I thought so," I said with gravity, and eyes that didn't dare to smile outright till they had permission, which, however, was not long withheld them. "How did you know?" "Oh, intuition, of course--who wouldn't have cried themselves to sleep, and so tired too!" "You're a nice sympathetic man, anyhow," she laughed; "what a pity you don't bicycle!" "Yes," I said, "I would give a thousand pounds for a bicycle at this moment." "You ought to get a good one for that," she laughed,--"all bright parts nickel, I suppose; indeed, you should get a real silver frame and gold handle-bars for that, don't you think? Well, it would be nice all the same to have your company a few miles, especially as it's growing dark," she added. "Especially as it's growing dark," I repeated. "You won't be going much farther to-night. Have you fixed on your inn?" I continued innocently. She had--but that was in a town too far to reach to-night, after her long sleep. "You might have wakened me," she said. "Yes, it was stupid of me not to have thought of it," I answered, offering no explanation of the dead bee which at the moment I espied a little away in the grass, and saying nothing of the merry tramp and the melancholy musician. Then we talked inns, and thus she fell beautifully into the pit which I had digged for her; and it was presently arranged that she should ride on to the Wheel of Pleasure and order a dinner, which she was to do me the honour of sharing with me. I was to follow on foot as speedily as might be, and it was with a high heart that I strode along the sunset lanes, hearing for some time the chiming of her bell in front of me, till she had wheeled it quite out of hearing, and it was lost in the distance. I never did a better five miles in my life. CHAPTER III TWO TOWN MICE AT A COUNTRY INN.