its investment than you
Americans are content to receive on your capital!'

'That's so! You hit it in one, miss! Which will you take, a cigar or a
cocoa-nut?'

I smiled. 'And what do you think you will call the machine in Europe?'

He gazed hard at me, and stroked his straw-coloured moustache. 'Well,
what do _you_ think of the _Lois Cayley_?'

'For Heaven's sake, no!' I cried, fervently. 'Mr. Hitchcock, I implore
you!'

He smiled pity for my weakness. 'Ah, high-toned again?' he repeated, as
if it were some natural malformation under which I laboured. 'Oh, ef you
don't like it, miss, we'll say no more about it. I am a gentleman, I am.
What's the matter with the _Excelsior_?'

'Nothing, except that it's very bad Latin,' I objected.

'That may be so; but it's very good business.'

He paused and mused, then he murmured low to himself, '"When through an
Alpine village passed." That's where the idea of the _Excelsior_ comes
in; see? "It goes up Mont Blanc," you said yourself. "Through snow and
ice, A cycle with the strange device, Excelsior!"'

'If I were you,' I said, 'I would stick to the name _Manitou_. It's
original, and it's distinctive.'

'Think so? Then chalk it up; the thing's done. You may not be aware of
it, miss, but you are a lady for whose opinion in such matters I hev a
high regard. _And_ you understand Europe. I do not. I admit it.
Everything seems to me to be _verboten_ in Germany; and everything else
to be _bad form_ in England.'

We walked down the steps together. 'What a picturesque old town!' I
said, looking round me, well pleased. Its beauty appealed to me, for I
had fifty pounds in pocket, and I had lunched sumptuously.

'_Old_ town?' he repeated, gazing with a blank stare. 'You call this
town _old_, do you?'

'Why, of course! Just look at the cathedral! Eight hundred years old, at
least!'

He ran his eye down the streets, dissatisfied.

'Well, ef this town is old,' he said at last, with a snap of his
fingers, 'it's precious little for its age.' And he strode away towards
the railway station.

'What about the bicycle?' I asked; for it lay, a silent victor, against
the railing of the steps, surrounded by a crowd of inquiring Teutons.

He glanced at it carelessly. 'Oh, the wheel?' he said. 'You may keep
it.'

He said it so exactly in the tone in which one tells a waiter he may
keep the change, that I resented the impertinence. 'No, thank you,' I
answered. 'I do not require it.'

H