And one morning it did come back, ridden by a man with a face all smudges, who presented a bill for payment. It had entirely transformed itself, like a widow-lady who had been brisked up by an unexpected offer of marriage. From a sober, old-fashioned tricycle it had taken on an appearance almost modern and festive. Its handle-bars had been replated; its framework re-enameled; its tall wheels cut down; its solid tires removed and replaced by pneumatics. It sparkled in the sun, as though defying butcher-boys to jeer at it. The man, with the face all smudges, wheeled it through the stable into the garden; he left it beneath the mulberry-tree, and there the children, on arriving home from school, found it. “Why, it's a new tricycle!” Peter looked it over, “No, it isn't, Kitten Kay. It's the old one altered.” Their mother, hearing their shouts, came out into the garden, nearly as excited herself. They had visions of spinning out to the Happy Cottage at the breakneck speed of eight miles an hour. While they clambered on to it, examined it and spotted new improvements in the way of a lamp and saddles, she explained to them how it had happened. “It's your father's doing. He meant it as a surprise. He thought the old tires made it too heavy, so----.” Kay interrupted. “Oh, Peter, do let's take it out on to the Terrace and try it.” As they wheeled it down the gravel path between the geranium beds, they chattered of how they would surprise Harry. But Harry was fated never to see it. On the Terrace, when they had mounted, while their mother watched them from the window, they found that everything was not well. The man with the face all smudges had been wise in demanding his money before his handiwork was tested. He had cut the wheels so low that, where the road was uneven, the pedals bumped against the ground. Life had, indeed, become serious for Peter; through his father's well-intentioned kindness, his means of communication between reality and fairyland had been annihilated. For a time it looked as though so small an accident as the indiscreet remodeling of a tricycle had lost for him forever the new friendships formed at the Happy Cottage. But one evening a dinner was given by Mr. Barrington to a famous man whose work he was anxious to publish. Kay and Peter were allowed to see him after dessert. The moment Peter's head appeared round the door the famous man rose up and shouted, “Hulloa, young 'un, so at last I've found you! Where the dickens have you been hiding?” Mr. Barrington lay back in his chair, his arms hanging limp on either side, the image of amazement. He heard his son explaining: “It was the tandem trike. Father wanted to be kind to us and----. Well, after he'd had it improved, it wouldn't work. And so, you see, there was no way of getting to you.”