I listened to these instructions with a light heart, and promised a dutiful obedience, for had not the things I was not to do been mentioned by name, and certainly the riding of bicycles was not among them. When the cars rushed off from the station I made up my mind that my destiny could be avoided no longer.
"Maximilian," a voice seemed to mutter within me, "all obstacles have vanished as if by magic from thy path. Four shillings and sixpence hast thou in thy pocket, so seize the opportunity ere it be too late."
And I seized it; that is to say, I went straight home with Thad, and telling him to amuse himself with anything short of pulling the cat's tail or fooling with ink-bottles, I left him there, and hurried off to the bicycle head-quarters to hire a machine.
"What size?" asked the man, when I had made a deposit of my silver watch as a guarantee that I wouldn't run away with his property.
Of course, never having ridden before, I hadn't a very clear idea of what this question meant; so the young fellow, seeing my confusion, promptly whipped a tape-line out of his pocket, and proceeded to find out how long my legs were.
"A forty-six-inch'll do you," he informed me, adding, "Tall of your age, too."
As this implied that he thought me rather young, I put on my gravest look, and pretended I didn't hear him, and while he went to bring out the machine, I resolved that nothing should induce me to ask for any "points" about the management of it. Besides, hadn't I often watched fellows mount, dismount, coast, and take "headers"?
"Only get started, and you're all right," was what I had heard riders say over and over again; so I determined to set the thing going the best way I could, and then stick to the saddle.
But when the man appeared again, pushing before him the bicycle, I must confess the big wheel looked very big, and the little seat very little and terribly far from the ground.
Still, I had no cowardly thoughts of giving way to my fears; for had I not ridden a three-wheeled velocipede for two years around our block home in New York without falling off a single time? And by quickly doing a sum in mental arithmetic, I found that the proportion of seven hundred and thirty days as against one hour was greatly in favor of my not tumbling during the hour.