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There was no doubt, however obscure the words seemed, that Mrs. Winslow had a clear purpose in her mind, nor that she was tremendously in earnest. Little blotches of red dabbled her cheeks, her breath came more quickly, and she swallowed between her words. Lorania could see the quiver in the muscles of her throat. She clasped her hands tight lest they should shake. “He is in love with Sibyl,” thought Lorania. “The poor woman!” She felt sorry for her, and she spoke gently and reassuringly:

“No girl with a good heart can help feeling tenderly toward her husband’s mother.”

Mrs. Winslow nodded. “You’re real comforting,” said she. She was silent a moment, and then said, in a different tone: “You ain’t got a large enough track. Wouldn’t you like to have our pasture too?”

Lorania expressed her gratitude, and invited the Winslows to see the practice.

“My niece will come out to-morrow,” she said, graciously.

“Yes? She is a real fine-appearing young lady,” said Mrs. Winslow.

Both the cyclists exulted. Neither of them, however, was prepared to behold the track made and the fence down the very next morning when they came out, about ten o’clock, to the west side of Miss Hopkins’ boundaries.

“As sure as you live, Maggie,” exclaimed Lorania, eagerly, “he’s got it all done! Now, that is something like a lover. I only hope his heart won’t be bruised as black and blue as I am with the wheel!”

“Shuey says the only harm your falls do you is to take away your confidence,” said Mrs. Ellis.

“He wouldn’t say so if he could see my knees !” retorted Miss Hopkins.

Mrs. Ellis, it will be observed, sheered away from the love affairs of Mr. Cyril Winslow. She had not yet made up her mind. And Mrs. Ellis, who had been married, did not jump at conclusions regarding the heart of man so readily as her spinster friend. She preferred to talk of the bicycle. Nor did Miss Hopkins refuse the subject. To her at this moment the most important object on the globe was the shining machine which she would allow no hand but hers to oil and dust. Both Mrs. Ellis and she were simply prostrated (as to their mental powers) by this new sport. They could not think nor talk nor read of anything but the wheel.

Between their accidents, they obtained glimpses of an exquisite exhilaration. And there was also to be counted the approval of their consciences, for they felt that no Turkish bath could wring out moisture from their systems like half an hour’s pumping at the bicycle treadles. Lorania during the month had ridden through one bottle of liniment and two of witch hazel, and by the end of the second bottle could ride a short distance alone. But Lorania could not yet dismount unassisted, and several times she had felled poor Winslow to the earth when he rashly adventured to stop her. Captain Carr had a peculiar, graceful fling of the arm, catching the saddle bar with one hand while he steadied the handles with the other. He did not hesitate in the least to grab Lorania’s belt if necessary. But poor modest Winslow, who fell upon the wheel and dared not touch the hem of a lady’s bicycle skirt, was as one in the path of a cyclone, and appeared daily in a fresh pair of white trousers.

“Yous have now,” Shuey remarked impressively, one day–“yous have now arrived at the most difficult and dangerous period in learning the wheel. It’s similar to a baby when it’s first learned to walk but ain’t yet got sense in walking. When it was little it would stay put wherever ye put it, and it didn’t know enough to go by itself, which is similar to you. When I was holding ye you couldn’t fall, but now you’re off alone depindent on yourself, object-struck by every tree, taking most of the pasture to turn in, and not able to git off save by falling–“