Kenneth had got his bicycle at last, and he was taking his first long ride on it. It was warm, and the road seemed to be all up hill. "If this road keeps on like this much longer," said Kenneth to himself, "I'll run into the moon. I guess papa was right when he said that bicycle-riding reminds him a good deal of work in its milder stages. However, I'd rather ride than work."
He went on a little farther, but the afternoon sun shone down hotter and hotter, and the road still seemed to have more uphill than a well-behaved road ought to have. After a while he came to a fine grove of trees. "I think I'll just turn in here and rest a few minutes, and then go back," said Kenneth. "Seems to me I ought to be able to coast about three-quarters of the way home—unless the road tilts the other way before I start, like a seesaw," he went on. He trundled his wheel into the grove out of sight of the road, stood it against a big tree, and lay down on the soft grass-covered ground in the shade.
"It seems to me," he mused, "that bicycles ought to be made so they would run themselves like—like—like horses. Then hills wouldn't make any difference." He was speaking very slowly, and half wondering if talking wasn't work too. "Then it wouldn't make any difference if the road did tilt up or—or—or turn sommersaults if it wanted to. Just think of a road ten miles long turning a sommersault." He laughed a little at the idea, but that was work too. "I—I wonder if bicycles couldn't be—be trained to—to—." It really was too hard work to talk. He hadn't noticed that another wheelman had come into the grove to rest, and left his bicycle by the same tree.
"Trained to do what?" said the other, who was enough bigger than Kenneth to be a young man. "To talk like a parrot, or to sit up and beg like a pug-dog?"
Kenneth laughed at the idea of a bicycle sitting up and hanging down its handle-bar and begging; and then he answered:
"Oh, no; just to go themselves, you know." The presence of the stranger seemed to revive him, so he sat up and looked at the other.
"Oh, shucks!" said the young man. "Trained to go themselves! Where did you come from?"
"Smithville," replied Kenneth.
"Thought so," answered the other. "You're in Bicycle-land now, where they are trained to go themselves. Come here!" he said, snapping his finger at his wheel, which rolled over and stopped by his side. "That's the way we have 'em trained here."
"Well, that's what I meant," returned Kenneth, not liking the lofty tone of the other very well. "That's precisely the way I am going to train mine." And he turned and snapped his fingers at his wheel, and it came toward him, though it wavered a good deal, and would have fallen if he hadn't caught it.