behind that he alone is the motive power, the man in
front merely doing the puffing. The mystery will never be solved. It is
annoying when Prudence is whispering to you on the one side not to overdo
your strength and bring on heart disease; while Justice into the other
ear is remarking, "Why should you do it all? This isn't a cab. He's not
your passenger:" to hear him grunt out:

"What's the matter--lost your pedals?"

Harris, in his early married days, made much trouble for himself on one
occasion, owing to this impossibility of knowing what the person behind
is doing. He was riding with his wife through Holland. The roads were
stony, and the machine jumped a good deal.

"Sit tight," said Harris, without turning his head.

What Mrs. Harris thought he said was, "Jump off." Why she should have
thought he said "Jump off," when he said "Sit tight," neither of them can
explain.

Mrs. Harris puts it in this way, "If you had said, 'Sit tight,' why
should I have jumped off?"

Harris puts it, "If I had wanted you to jump off, why should I have said
'Sit tight!'?"

The bitterness is past, but they argue about the matter to this day.

Be the explanation what it may, however, nothing alters the fact that
Mrs. Harris did jump off, while Harris pedalled away hard, under the
impression she was still behind him. It appears that at first she
thought he was riding up the hill merely to show off. They were both
young in those days, and he used to do that sort of thing. She expected
him to spring to earth on reaching the summit, and lean in a careless and
graceful attitude against the machine, waiting for her. When, on the
contrary, she saw him pass the summit and proceed rapidly down a long and
steep incline, she was seized, first with surprise, secondly with
indignation, and lastly with alarm. She ran to the top of the hill and
shouted, but he never turned his head. She watched him disappear into a
wood a mile and a half distant, and then sat down and cried. They had
had a slight difference that morning, and she wondered if he had taken it
seriously and intended desertion. She had no money; she knew no Dutch.
People passed, and seemed sorry for her; she tried to make them
understand what had happened. They gathered that she had lost something,
but could not grasp what. They took her to the nearest village, and
found a policeman for her. He concluded from her pantomime that some man
had stolen her bicycle. The