again for another twelve months, lies blacker and
blacker across the sunlight. But on the first morning of the ten the
holiday has no past, and ten days seems as good as infinity.

And it was fine, full of a promise of glorious days, a deep blue sky
with dazzling piles of white cloud here and there, as though celestial
haymakers had been piling the swathes of last night's clouds into cocks
for a coming cartage. There were thrushes in the Richmond Road, and a
lark on Putney Heath. The freshness of dew was in the air; dew or
the relics of an overnight shower glittered on the leaves and grass.
Hoopdriver had breakfasted early by Mrs. Gunn's complaisance. He wheeled
his machine up Putney Hill, and his heart sang within him. Halfway up, a
dissipated-looking black cat rushed home across the road and vanished
under a gate. All the big red-brick houses behind the variegated shrubs
and trees had their blinds down still, and he would not have changed
places with a soul in any one of them for a hundred pounds.

He had on his new brown cycling suit--a handsome Norfolk jacket thing
for 30/(sp.)--and his legs--those martyr legs--were more than consoled
by thick chequered stockings, "thin in the foot, thick in the leg," for
all they had endured. A neat packet of American cloth behind the saddle
contained his change of raiment, and the bell and the handle-bar and the
hubs and lamp, albeit a trifle freckled by wear, glittered blindingly
in the rising sunlight. And at the top of the hill, after only
one unsuccessful attempt, which, somehow, terminated on the green,
Hoopdriver mounted, and with a stately and cautious restraint in his
pace, and a dignified curvature of path, began his great Cycling Tour
along the Southern Coast.

There is only one phrase to describe his course at this stage, and that
is--voluptuous curves. He did not ride fast, he did not ride straight,
an exacting critic might say he did not ride well--but he rode
generously, opulently, using the whole road and even nibbling at the
footpath. The excitement never flagged. So far he had never passed or
been passed by anything, but as yet the day was young and the road was
clear. He doubted his steering so much that, for the present, he had
resolved to dismount at the approach of anything else upon wheels. The
shadows of the trees lay very long and blue across the road, the morning
sunlight was like amber fire.

At the cross-roads at the top of West Hill, where the cattle