While they were munching she sprung it upon them that she was going to buy a bicycle. A new design had just been invented with two low wheels of equal size. It could be made so that a lady could ride it.
Edward was just a little shocked. Betty had the reputation as it was of being a bit eccentric. She went long walks by herself in thick boots and rarely wore gloves. This would make her still more talked about. Betty thought she would be doing good. As the daughter of one of the leading men in Millsborough she could afford to defy the conventions and open the way for others. Girls employed in the mills, who now only saw their people twice a year, would be able to run home for weekends, would be able to enjoy rides into the country on half-holidays. Revolutions always came from the top. The girls would call after her at first, she fully expected. Later they would be heartened to follow her example.
Her difficulty was learning. She proposed to go up to the moors early in the morning where she could struggle with the thing unseen. But at first one wanted assistance and support. There was the gardener’s boy. But she feared he was weak about the knees.
“I wish you’d let me come,” said Anthony. “I like a walk in the early morning. It freshens my brain for the day.”
“Thank you,” she answered. “I was really thinking of you, but I didn’t like to ask in case it might interfere with your work.”
She promised to let him know when the bicycle arrived. He might like to come round and have a look at it.
It was with something of a pang that he said good-bye to Edward, though it would be less than three months before they would meet again. He had not made many friends at the school; he was too self-centered. Young Mowbray was the only boy for whom he felt any real affection.
Tetteridge’s “Preparatory and Commercial School” had prospered beyond expectation. In the language of the advertisement it supplied a long-felt want. “The gentry” of Millsborough—to be exact, its better-off shopkeepers, its higher-salaried clerks and minor professionals—were catered for to excess. But among its skilled workmen and mechanics, earning good wages, were many ambitious for their children. Education was in the air; feared by most of the upper classes as likely to be the beginning of red ruin and the breaking up of laws; regarded by the more thoughtful of the workers, with extravagant hopes, as being the sure road to the Promised Land. Tetteridge had a natural genius for teaching; he had a way of making the work interesting. The boys liked him and talked about him and the things he told them. It became clear that the house in Bridlington Street would soon be too small for his needs.
“It sounds nonsensical, I know,” said Mr. Tetteridge; “but there are times when I wish that I hadn’t been so sensible.”
“What have you been doing sensible?” laughed Anthony.