“You needn’t be afraid,” said Jimmy, “they won’t take this one from me; and yet I hope, in a few years’ time, to see it all over the place.”
“You hope to have it taken from you in a few years only, eh? But why?”
“For all the world to profit by it.”
“All the world on the back-wheel!” protested Lily, who was always thinking bikes. “Then what will become of the artistes?”
“In a few years, Lily, people won’t go about on wheels,” said Jimmy jokingly.
“What will they do then?”
Lily would have burst out laughing, in other circumstances; but they had now reached the stage. The iron curtain was down. She looked round with scared eyes for something out of the common. Jimmy, after making sure that they were quite alone, walked up to the monster’s cage, slid back the door ...
The aerobike, with wings wide open, seemed to loom out of the darkness.
“My!” cried Lily. “It’s a bird! So that was your brain-work in Berlin and in ... What is it?”