requirements. "The fact is--I've read precious little. One don't

get much of a chance, situated as I am. We have a library at
business, and I've gone through that. Most Besant I've read, and

a lot of Mrs. Braddon's and Rider Haggard and Marie Corelli--and,
well--a Ouida or so. They're good stories, of course, and

first-class writers, but they didn't seem to have much to do with
me. But there's heaps of books one hears talked about, I HAVEN'T

read."
"Don't you read any other books but novels?"

"Scarcely ever. One gets tired after business, and you can't get
the books. I have been to some extension lectures, of course,

'Lizabethan Dramatists,' it was, but it seemed a little
high-flown, you know. And I went and did wood-carving at the same

place. But it didn't seem leading nowhere, and I cut my thumb and
chucked it."

He made a depressing spectacle, with his face anxious and his
hands limp. "It makes me sick," he said, "to think how I've been

fooled with. My old schoolmaster ought to have a juiced HIDING.
He's a thief. He pretended to undertake to make a man of me, and

be's stole twenty-three years of my life, filled me up with
scraps and sweepings. Here I am! I don't KNOW anything, and I

can't DO anything, and all the learning time is over."
"Is it?" she said ; but he did not seem to hear her. "My o'

people didn't know any better, and went and paid thirty pounds
premium--thirty pounds down to have me made THIS. The G.V.

promised to teach me the trade, and he never taught me anything
but to be a Hand. It's the way they do with draper's apprentices.

If every swindler was locked up--well, you'd have nowhere to buy
tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns and those

chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm not such muck that I might
not have been better--with teaching. I wonder what the chaps who

sneer and laugh at such as me would be if they'd been fooled
about as I've been. At twenty-three--it's a long start."

He looked up with a wintry smile, a sadder and wiser Hoopdriver
indeed than him of the glorious imaginings. "It's YOU done this,"

he said. "You're real. And it sets me thinking what I really am,
and what I might have been. Suppose it was all different--"

"MAKE it different."
"How?"

"WORK. Stop playing at life. Face it like a man."
"Ah!" said Hoopdriver, glancing at her out of the corners of his

eyes. "And even then--"
"No! It's not much good. I'm beginning too late."

And there, in blankly thoughtful silence, that conversation
ended.

IN THE NEW FOREST
XXXVII

At Ringwood they lunched, and Jessie met with a disappointment.
There was no letter for her at the post office. Opposite the

hotel, The Chequered Career, was a machine shop with a
conspicuously second-hand Marlborough Club tandem tricycle

displayed in the window, together with the announcement that
bicycles and tricycles were on hire within. The establishment was

impressed on Mr. Hoopdriver's mind by the proprietor's action in
coming across the road and narrowly inspecting their machines.

His action revived a number of disagreeable impressions, but,
happily, came to nothing. While they were still lunching, a tall

clergyman, with a heated face, entered the room and sat down at
the table next to theirs. He was in a kind of holiday costume;

that is to say, he had a more than usually high collar, fastened
behind and rather the worse for the weather, and his long-tail

coat had been replaced by a black jacket of quite remarkable
brevity. He had faded brown shoes on his feet, his trouser legs

were grey with dust, and he wore a hat of piebald straw in the
place of the customary soft felt. He was evidently socially

inclined.
"A most charming day, sir," he said, in a ringing tenor.

"Charming," said Mr. Hoopdriver, over a portion of pie.
"You are, I perceive, cycling through this delightful country,"

said the clergyman.
"Touring," explained Mr. Hoopdriver. "I can imagine that, with a

properly oiled machine, there can be no easier nor pleasanter way
of seeing the country."

"No," said Mr. Hoopdriver; "it isn't half a bad. way of getting
about."

"For a young and newly married couple, a tandem bicycle must be,
I should imagine, a delightful bond."

"Quite so," said Mr. Hoopdriver, reddening a little.
"Do you ride a tandem?"

"No--we're separate," said Mr. Hoopdriver.
"The motion through the air is indisputably of a very

exhilarating description." With that decision, the clergyman
turned to give his orders to the attendant, in a firm,

authoritative voice, for a cup of tea, two gelatine lozenges,
bread and butter, salad, and pie to follow. "The gelatine

lozenges I must have. I require them to precipitate the tannin in
my tea," he remarked to the room at large, and folding his hands,

remained for some time with his chin thereon, staring fixedly at
a little picture over Mr. Hoopdriver's head.

"I myself am a cyclist," said the clergyman, descending suddenly
upon Mr. Hoopdriver.

"Indeed!" said Mr. Hoopdriver, attacking the moustache. "What
machine, may I ask?"

"I have recently become possessed of a tricycle. A bicycle is, I
regret to say, considered too--how shall I put it? --flippant by

my parishioners. So I have a tricycle. I have just been hauling
it hither."

"Hauling!" said Jessie, surprised.
"With a shoe lace. And partly carrying it on my back."

The pause was unexpected. Jessie had some trouble with a crumb.
Mr. Hoopdriver's face passed through several phases of surprise.

Then he saw the explanation. "Had an accident?"
"I can hardly call it an accident. The wheels suddenly refused to

go round. I found myself about five miles from here with an
absolutely immobile machine."

"Ow!" said Mr. Hoopdriver, trying to seem intelligent, and Jessie
glanced at this insane person.

"It appears," said the clergyman, satisfied with the effect he
had created, "that my man carefully washed out the bearings with

paraffin, and let the machine dry without oiling it again. The
consequence was that they became heated to a considerable

temperature and jammed. Even at the outset the machine ran
stiffly as well as noisily, and I, being inclined to ascribe this

stiffness to my own lassitude, merely redoubled my exertions."
"'Ot work all round," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"You could scarcely put it more appropriately. It is my rule of
life to do whatever I find to do with all my might. I believe,

indeed, that the bearings became red hot. Finally one of the
wheels jammed together. A side wheel it was, so that its stoppage

necessitated an inversion of the entire apparatus,--an inversion
in which I participated."

"Meaning, that you went over?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, suddenly much
amused.

"Precisely. And not brooking my defeat, I suffered repeatedly.
You may understand, perhaps, a natural impatience. I