"

"Certainly," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"Then we won't detain you."

And, ignominiously, Mr. Hoopdriver turned his machine about, struggled
upon it, and resumed the road southward. And when he learnt that he was
not on the Portsmouth road, it was impossible to turn and go back, for
that would be to face his shame again, and so he had to ride on by Brook
Street up the hill to Haslemere. And away to the right the Portsmouth
road mocked at him and made off to its fastnesses amid the sunlit green
and purple masses of Hindhead, where Mr. Grant Allen writes his Hill Top
Novels day by day.

The sun shone, and the wide blue hill views and pleasant valleys one saw
on either hand from the sandscarred roadway, even the sides of the road
itself set about with grey heather scrub and prickly masses of gorse,
and pine trees with their year's growth still bright green, against the
darkened needles of the previous years, were fresh and delightful to Mr.
Hoopdriver's eyes But the brightness of the day and the day-old sense of
freedom fought an uphill fight against his intolerable vexation at that
abominable encounter, and had still to win it when he reached Haslemere.
A great brown shadow, a monstrous hatred of the other man in brown,
possessed him. He had conceived the brilliant idea of abandoning
Portsmouth, or at least giving up the straight way to his
fellow-wayfarers, and of striking out boldly to the left, eastward. He
did not dare to stop at any of the inviting public-houses in the
main street of Haslemere, but turned up a side way and found a little
beer-shop, the Good Hope, wherein to refresh himself. And there he ate
and gossipped condescendingly with an aged labourer, assuming the
while for his own private enjoyment the attributes of a Lost Heir, and
afterwards mounted and rode on towards Northchapel, a place which a
number of finger-posts conspired to boom, but which some insidious
turning prevented him from attaining.

XIV. HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER REACHED MIDHURST

It was one of my uncle's profoundest remarks that human beings are the
only unreasonable creatures. This observation was so far justified by
Mr. Hoopdriver that, after spending the morning tortuously avoiding the
other man in brown and the Young Lady in Grey, he spent a considerable
part of the afternoon in thinking about the Young Lady in Grey, and
contemplating in an optimistic spirit the possibilities of seeing her
again. Memory and imagination played rou