"I cannot promise for George," I said; "a little thing will sometimes irritate him, as you know. If such an accident as you suggest happen, he may be cross, but I will undertake to explain to him that it was not your fault." "Is the thing all right?" he asked. "The tandem," I replied, "is well." He said: "Have you overhauled it?" I said: "I have not, nor is anyone else going to overhaul it. The thing is now in working order, and it is going to remain in working order till we start." I have had experience of this "overhauling." There was a man at Folkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees. He proposed one evening we should go for a long bicycle ride together on the following day, and I agreed. I got up early, for me; I made an effort, and was pleased with myself. He came half an hour late: I was waiting for him in the garden. It was a lovely day. He said:-- "That's a good-looking machine of yours. How does it run?" "Oh, like most of them!" I answered; "easily enough in the morning; goes a little stiffly after lunch." He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook it violently. I said: "Don't do that; you'll hurt it." I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to him. Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper person to shake it. I felt much as I should had he started whacking my dog. He said: "This front wheel wobbles." I said: "It doesn't if you don't wobble it." It didn't wobble, as a matter of fact--nothing worth calling a wobble. He said: "This is dangerous; have you got a screw-hammer?" I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did know something about the business. I went to the tool shed to see what I could find. When I came back he was sitting on the ground with the front wheel between his legs. He was playing with it, twiddling it round between his fingers; the remnant of the machine was lying on the gravel path beside him. He said: "Something has happened to this front wheel of yours." "It looks like it, doesn't it?" I answered. But he was the sort of man that never understands satire. He said: "It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong." I said: "Don't you trouble about it any more; you will make yourself tired. Let us put it back and get off." He said: "We may as well see what is the matter with it, now it is out." He talked as though it had dropped out by accident. Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and out rolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls. "Catch 'em!" he shouted; "catch 'em! We mustn't lose any of them." He was quite excited about them.