mething 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 ho