Both the cyclists exulted. Neither of them, however, was prepared to behold the track made and the fence down the very next morning when they came out, about ten o'clock, to the west side of Miss Hopkins's boundaries.
"As sure as you live, Maggie," exclaimed Lorania, eagerly, "he's got it all done! Now that is something like a lover. I only hope his heart won't be bruised as black and blue as I am with the wheel!"
"Shuey says the only harm your falls do you is to take away your confidence," said Mrs. Ellis.
"He wouldn't say so if he could see my knees!" retorted Miss Hopkins.
Mrs. Ellis, it will be observed, sheered away from the love-affairs of Mr. Cyril Winslow. She had not yet made up her mind. And Mrs. Ellis, who had been married, did not jump at conclusions regarding the heart of man so rapidly as her spinster friend. She preferred to talk of the bicycle. Nor did Miss Hopkins refuse the subject. To her at this moment the most important object on the globe was the shining machine which she would allow no hand but hers to oil and dust. Both Mrs. Ellis and she were simply prostrated (as to their mental powers) by this new sport. They could not think nor talk nor read of anything but the wheel. This is a peculiarity of the bicyclist. No other sport appears to make such havoc with the mind.
One can learn to swim without describing his sensations to every casual acquaintance or hunting up the natatorial columns in the newspapers. One may enjoy riding a horse and yet go about his ordinary business with an equal mind. One learns to play golf and still remains a peaceful citizen who can discuss politics with interest. But the cyclist, man or woman, is soaked in every pore with the delight and the perils of wheeling. He talks of it (as he thinks of it) incessantly. For this fatuous passion there is one excuse. Other sports have the fearful delight of danger and the pleasure of the consciousness of dexterity and the dogged Anglo-Saxon joy of combat and victory; but no other sport restores to middle age the pure, exultant, muscular intoxication of childhood. Only on the wheel can an elderly woman feel as she felt when she ran and leaped and frolicked amid the flowers as a child.
Lorania, of course, no longer jumped or ran; she kicked in the Delsarte exercises, but it was a measured, calculated, one may say cold-blooded kick, which limbered her muscles but did not restore her youthful glow of soul. Her legs and not her spirits pranced. The same thing may be said for Margaret Ellis. Now, between their accidents, they obtained glimpses of an exquisite exhilaration. And there was also to be counted the approval of their consciences, for they felt that no Turkish bath could wring out moisture from their systems like half an hour's pumping at the bicycle treadles. Lorania during the month had ridden through one bottle of liniment and two of witch-hazel, and by the end of the second bottle could ride a short distance alone. But Lorania could not yet dismount unassisted, and several times she had felled poor Winslow to the earth when he rashly adventured to stop her. Captain Carr had a peculiar, graceful fling of the arm, catching the saddle-bar with one hand while he steadied the handles with the other. He did not hesitate in the least to grab Lorania's belt if necessary. But poor modest Winslow, who fell upon the wheel and dared not touch the hem of a lady's bicycle skirt, was as one in the path of a cyclone, and appeared daily in a fresh pair of white trousers.
"Yous have now," Shuey remarked, impressively, one day—"yous have now arrived at the most difficult and dangerous period in learning the wheel. It's similar to a baby when it's first learned to walk but 'ain't yet got sense in walking. When it was little it would stay put wherever ye put it, and it didn't know enough to go by itself, which is similar to you. When I was holding ye you couldn't fall, but now you're off alone depindent on yourself, object-struck by every tree, taking most of the pasture to turn in, and not able to git off save by falling—"
"Oh, couldn't you go with her somehow?" exclaimed Mrs. Winslow, appalled at the picture. "Wouldn't a rope round her be some help? I used to put it round Cyril when he was learning to walk."
"Well, no, ma'am," said Shuey, patiently. "Don't you be scared; the riding will come; she's getting on grandly. And ye should see Mr. Winslow. 'Tis a pleasure to teach him. He rode in one lesson. I ain't learning him nothing but tricks now."