For they were making time. The club itself, thanks to the failure of the express company to deliver Charley's new "Columbia" when promised, had several hours' start on the road; and Starrett, like the obliging brother that he was, had remained behind in order that Charlotte need not ride alone nor the club be longer delayed by waiting for her.
Charley Van Rensselaer, her cousin Cornelia, or "Corny" Hadwin, and their warm friends Mattie Hyde and Arno Cummings, were four bright and active young girls of from thirteen to sixteen, who composed the Girls' Tricycle Club. Little by little they had won first the interest and then the consent of their somewhat conservative parents to this novel but exhilarating exercise, and having now become expert riders, they were off for a long run of eighty miles down Cape Cod from Sherridoc City to Curtin Harbor, where their parents had summer cottages. Faithful and clever Joe Marston, Mr. Van Rensselaer's colored servant, and an expert tricycler, had gone ahead with the club as guide and commissary-general, and Starrett Van Rensselaer, Charley's younger brother, was invited to accompany them as an escort, on the odd-looking "Royal Mail" he had borrowed for the trip,—bicycles not being allowed.
And now the door-yards broaden out and the houses become still more rambling. There are wide-spreading orchard boughs, and cool woody spaces here and there between the farms. Now a youngster scampers into the house shrieking, "Ma, Ma! Oh, come here, Ma! Here's a girl a-ridin' three wheels at once!" and Charley, looking back, perceives the urchin's sisters and cousins and aunts peering at her from the door. Starrett too looks back, and laughs.
"You'll have to get used to that," he says.
"I expect to," responds Charley serenely; "but you must remember that four of these things have gone on before us on this same road and they must have taken off a little of the novelty."
Over the brow of Haymarket Hill they go, and the long steep sweep into the valley of the Owassee lies before them. Charley, with her feet on the "rest," commences to descend. An amazed cow grazing by the roadside makes a charge on the singular vehicle, but the girl never flinches, and with one hand on the steering-bar and the other on the brake she avoids every stone, every rut, every gully in the road. The irate cow, after nearly plunging on its nose down the first steep incline, pauses to recover its senses and then returns slowly up the hill. Starrett waves it a laughing adieu. "Sensible bovine that," he says; "she knows that a stern chase is a long chase."
"My, though!" exclaims delighted Charley, "we're just flying, Starrett! Aren't we?"
They are indeed. The bushes whiz past,—the wind sweeps their faces,—trees, stones, fences flit by like phantoms. Charley feels like a bird on the wing. Such exhilaration is there in a good tricycle "coast" downhill!
But it is not all such pleasure; for, a few miles farther on, they become acquainted with the other side of the story, as they go toiling up the long ascent of Comstock Hill, a sandy and winding incline that leads to the highlands of Fisherville.
"If it weren't for the sand," said Charley as she pushes her tricycle before her, "I would test the new 'power-gear' on my 'Columbia' by riding up Comstock Hill. But, dear me, I believe there are not three yards of solid earth on this road!"