There are heads at doors and windows, and people on the street stop to gaze. At first the girls feel a little abashed at so much attention. But nobody is discourteous; Joe rides steadily on, and there is nothing to do but to follow.
"I suppose we do look queer to them," says Mattie Hyde.
"Oh, well, you are missionaries, you know," says Starrett assuringly. "Perhaps your club may be the means of introducing tricycles into many of the places we shall pass through."
"That's one of our objects, of course," observes Charley.
"If girls and women knew what comfort one can take with a tricycle, half the battle would be won," says Arno Cummings timidly.
"THE BUSHES WHIZ PAST,—TREES, STONES, FENCES FLIT BY LIKE PHANTOMS."
"It isn't altogether that, Arno," says Charley, who, as the originator of the club, has her advanced theories to support. "A good many would like to, but don't really dare. You know that Shakspere says 'Conscience doth make cowards of us all.' I think that custom makes us cowards, too."
"Custom will be on our side, though, by and by," declares Mattie Hyde. "Doctor Sawyer told Mamma the other day that he would prescribe the tricycle rather than medicine for many of his patients. He said that the machines are much used in England, and that they are gaining ground in this country, though not so rapidly as he could wish."
But even this knowledge of the healthfulness and desirability of the tricycle does not make a hard piece of road any easier. After a night's rest at the hospitable house of an aunt of Mattie Hyde's, the club find themselves, next day, among the "Sandwiches," as Starrett facetiously dubs the town of that name which is divided into North, East, South, and West Sandwich. And there they come upon a wooded tract that sorely taxes their endurance and presents the most formidable obstacle they have yet encountered. The sand is impassable; it closes completely over the wheel-tires, and, after a short space of arduous labor, the club come to a dismayed standstill.