Now. What was this leading up to? "She did it bringing in your bicycle." Puzzling sometimes over passages with Mabel that with mysterious and surprising suddenness had plunged into scenes, he had whimsically envisaged how he had been, as it were, led blindfolded to the edge of a precipice, and then, whizz! sent flying over on to the angry crags below.
Bantering protest sometimes averted the disaster. "Well, come now, Mabel, that's not my fault. That was your idea, making Low Jinks come out and meet me every evening as if the old bike was a foam-flecked steed. Wasn't it now?"
"Yes, but not in the dark."
Mysterious manoeuvring! But he felt he was approaching the edge. "In the dark?"
"Yes, not in the dark. What I mean is, I really cannot imagine why you must keep up your riding all through the winter. It was different when there was no other way. Now the railway is running I simply cannot imagine why you don't use it."
"Well, that's easy—because I like the ride."
"You can't possibly like riding back on these pitch dark nights, cold and often wet. That's absurd."
"Well, I like it a jolly sight better than fugging up in those carriages with all that gassing crowd of Garden Home fussers."
And immediately, whizz! he went over the edge.
"That's just it!" Mabel said. And he thought, "Ah!"