[CHAPTER V.]
BIDIANE PLAYS AN OVERTURE.
"I've tried the force of every reason on him,
Soothed and caressed, been angry, soothed again."
Addison.
A few days later, Bidiane happened to be caught in a predicament, when none of her new friends were near, and she was forced to avail herself of Agapit's assistance.
She had been on her wheel nearly to Weymouth to make a call on one of her numerous and newly acquired girl friends. Merrily she was gliding homeward, and being on a short stretch of road bounded by hay-fields that contained no houses, and fancying that no one was near her, she lifted up her voice in a saucy refrain, "L'homme qui m'aura, il n'aura pas tout ce qu'il voudra" (The man that gets me, will not get all he wants).
"La femme qui m'aura, elle n'aura pas tout ce qu'elle voudra" (The woman that gets me, she'll not get all she wants), chanted Agapit, who was coming behind in his buggy.
Suddenly the girl's voice ceased; in the twinkling of an eye there had been a rip, a sudden evacuation of air from one of the rubber tubes on her wheel, and she had sprung to the road.
"Good afternoon," said Agapit, driving up, "you have punctured a tire."
"Yes," she replied, in dismay, "the wretched thing! If I knew which wicked stone it was that did it, I would throw it into the Bay."