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“Oh, couldn’t you go with her somehow?” exclaimed Mrs. Winslow, appalled at the picture. “Wouldn’t a rope round her be some help? I used to put it round Cyril when he was learning to walk.”

“Well, no, ma’am,” said Shuey, patiently. “Don’t you be scared; the riding will come; she’s getting on grandly. And ye should see Mr. Winslow. ‘Tis a pleasure to teach him. He rode in one lesson. I ain’t learning him nothing but tricks now.”

“But, Mr. Winslow, why don’t you ride here–with us?” said Sibyl, with her coquettish and flattering smile. “We’re always hearing of your beautiful riding. Are we never to see it?”

“I think Mr. Winslow is waiting for that swell English cycle suit that I hear about,” said the captain, grinning; and Winslow grew red to his eyelids.

Lorania gave an indignant side glance at Sibyl. Why need the girl make game of an honest man who loved her? Sibyl was biting her lips and darting side glances at the captain. She called the pasture practice slow, but she seemed, nevertheless, to enjoy herself sitting on the bench, the captain on one side and Winslow on the other, rattling off her girlish jokes, while her aunt and Mrs. Ellis, with the anxious, set faces of the beginner, were pedalling frantically after Cardigan. Lorania began to pity Winslow, for it was growing plain to her that Sibyl and the captain understood each other. She thought that even if Sibyl did care for the soldier, she need not be so careless of Winslow’s feelings. She talked with the cashier herself, trying to make amends for Sibyl’s absorption in the other man, and she admired the fortitude that concealed the pain that he must feel. It became quite the expected thing for the Winslows to be present at the practice; but Winslow had not yet appeared on his wheel. He used to bring a box of candy with him, or rather three boxes–one for each lady, he said–and a box of peppermints for his mother. He was always very attentive to his mother.

“And fancy, Aunt Margaret,” laughed Sibyl, “he has asked both auntie and me to the theater. He is not going to compromise himself by singling one of us out. He’s a careful soul. By the way, Aunt Margaret, Mrs. Winslow was telling me yesterday that I am the image of auntie at my age. Am I? Do I look like her? Was she as slender as I?”

“Almost,” said Mrs. Ellis, who was not so inflexibly truthful as her friend.

“No, Sibyl,” said Lorania, with a deep, deep sigh, “I was always plump; I was a chubby child ! And oh, what do you think I heard in the crowd at Manly’s once? One woman said to another, ‘Miss Hopkins has got a wheel.’ ‘Miss Sibyl?’ said the other. ‘No; the stout Miss Hopkins,’ said the first creature; and the second–” Lorania groaned.

“What did she say to make you feel that way?”

“She said–she said, ‘Oh, my!'” answered Lorania, with a dying look.

“Well, she was horrid,” said Mrs. Ellis; “but you know you have grown thin. Come on; let’s ride!”

“I never shall be able to ride,” said Lorania, gloomily. “I can get on, but I can’t get off. And they’ve taken off the brake, so I can’t stop. And I’m object-struck by everything I look at. Some day I shall look down hill. Well, my will’s in the lower drawer of the mahogany desk.”

Perhaps Lorania had an occult inkling of the future. For this is what happened: That evening Winslow rode on to the track in his new English bicycle suit, which had just come. He hoped that he didn’t look like a fool in those queer clothes. But the instant he entered the pasture he saw something that drove everything else out of his head, and made him bend over the steering-bar and race madly across the green; Miss Hopkins’ bicycle was running away down hill! Cardigan, on foot, was pelting obliquely, in the hopeless thought to intercept her, while Mrs. Ellis, who was reeling over the ground with her own bicycle, wheeled as rapidly as she could to the brow of the hill, where she tumbled off, and, abandoning the wheel, rushed on foot to her friend’s rescue.