He lit a cigarette, and sat smoking and meditating. He did not even look up when vehicles passed. It was perhaps ten minutes before he roused himself. “What rot it is! What’s the good of thinking such things,” he said. “I’m only a blessed draper’s assistant.” (To be exact, he did not say blessed. The service of a shop may polish a man’s exterior ways, but the ’prentices’ dormitory is an indifferent school for either manners or morals.) He stood up and began wheeling his machine towards Esher. It was going to be a beautiful day, and the hedges and trees and the open country were all glorious to his town-tired eyes. But it was a little different from the elation of his start. “Look at the gentleman wizzer bicitle,” said a nursemaid on the path to a personage in a perambulator. That healed him a little. “‘Gentleman wizzer bicitle,’—‘bloomin’ Dook’—I can’t look so very seedy,” he said to himself. “I _wonder_—I should just like to know—” There was something very comforting in the track of _her_ pneumatic running straight and steady along the road before him. It must be hers. No other pneumatic had been along the road that morning. It was just possible, of course, that he might see her once more—coming back. Should he try and say something smart? He speculated what manner of girl she might be. Probably she was one of these here New Women. He had a persuasion the cult had been maligned. Anyhow she was a Lady. And rich people, too! Her machine couldn’t have cost much under twenty pounds. His mind came round and dwelt some time on her visible self. Rational dress didn’t look a bit unwomanly. However, he disdained to be one of your fortune-hunters. Then his thoughts drove off at a tangent. He would certainly have to get something to eat at the next public house. VI. ON THE ROAD TO RIPLEY In the fulness of time, Mr. Hoopdriver drew near the Marquis of Granby at Esher, and as he came under the railway arch and saw the inn in front of him, he mounted his machine again and rode bravely up to the doorway. Burton and biscuit and cheese he had, which, indeed, is Burton in its proper company; and as he was eating there came a middleaged man in a drab cycling suit, very red and moist and angry in the face, and asked bitterly for a lemon squash. And he sat down upon the seat in the bar and mopped his face. But scarcely had he sat down before he got up again and stared out of the doorway. “Damn!” said he. Then, “Damned Fool!” “Eigh?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking round suddenly with a piece of cheese in his cheek. The man in drab faced him. “I called myself a Damned Fool, sir. Have you any objections?” “Oh!—None. None,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “I thought you spoke to me. I didn’t hear what you said.” “To have a contemplative disposition and an energetic temperament, sir, is hell. Hell, I tell you. A contemplative disposition and a phlegmatic temperament, all very well. But energy and philosophy—!”