hase seemed to last an interminable
time, and all kinds of people, heathkeepers, shopmen, policemen, the old
man in the Keep, the angry man in drab, the barmaid at the Unicorn, men
with flying-machines, people playing billiards in the doorways, silly,
headless figures, stupid cocks and hens encumbered with parcels
and umbrellas and waterproofs, people carrying bedroom candles, and
such-like riffraff, kept getting in his way and annoying him, although
he sounded his electric bell, and said, "Wonderful, wonderful!" at every
corner....

XIII. HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WENT TO HASLEMERE

There was some little delay in getting Mr. Hoopdriver's breakfast, so
that after all he was not free to start out of Guildford until just upon
the stroke of nine. He wheeled his machine from the High Street in some
perplexity. He did not know whether this young lady, who had seized hold
of his imagination so strongly, and her unfriendly and possibly menacing
brother, were ahead of him or even now breakfasting somewhere in
Guildford. In the former case he might loiter as he chose; in the latter
he must hurry, and possibly take refuge in branch roads.

It occurred to him as being in some obscure way strategic, that he would
leave Guildford not by the obvious Portsmouth road, but by the road
running through Shalford. Along this pleasant shady way he felt
sufficiently secure to resume his exercises in riding with one hand
off the handles, and in staring over his shoulder. He came over once
or twice, but fell on his foot each time, and perceived that he was
improving. Before he got to Bramley a specious byway snapped him up, ran
with him for half a mile or more, and dropped him as a terrier drops
a walkingstick, upon the Portsmouth again, a couple of miles from
Godalming. He entered Godalming on his feet, for the road through that
delightful town is beyond dispute the vilest in the world, a mere tumult
of road metal, a way of peaks and precipices, and, after a successful
experiment with cider at the Woolpack, he pushed on to Milford.

All this time he was acutely aware of the existence of the Young Lady
in Grey and her companion in brown, as a child in the dark is of Bogies.
Sometimes he could hear their pneumatics stealing upon him from behind,
and looking round saw a long stretch of vacant road. Once he saw far
ahead of him a glittering wheel, but it proved to be a workingman riding
to destruction on a very tall ordinary. And he felt a curio