“Ginger,” says the young man, pointing significantly to a bit of blue ribbon in his button-hole.
“Come far to-day, sir?” asks the host, as he pours out the liquid.
“Fifty miles—rather more,” says Barret, setting down the glass.
“Fine weather, sir, for bicycling,” says the landlord, sweeping in the coppers.
“Very; good-day.”
Before that cheery “Good-day” had ceased to affect the publican’s brain Barret was again spinning along the road to London.
It was the road on which the mail coaches of former days used to whirl, to the merry music of bugle, wheel, and whip, along which so many men and women had plodded in days gone by, in search of fame and fortune and happiness: some, to find these in a greater or less degree, with much of the tinsel rubbed off, others, to find none of them, but instead thereof, wreck and ruin in the mighty human whirlpool; and not a few to discover the fact that happiness does not depend either on fortune or fame, but on spiritual harmony with God in Jesus Christ.
Pedestrians there still were on that road, bound for the same goal, and, doubtless, with similar aims; but mail and other coaches had been driven from the scene.
Barret had the broad road pretty much to himself.
Quickly he ran into the suburban districts, and here his urgent haste had to be restrained a little.