The Wheels of Chance; A Bicycling Idyll by H.G. Wells
Etext prepared by Dianne Bean of Phoenix, AZ with OmnipagePro
software donated by Caere.





THE WHEELS OF CHANCE; A BICYCLING IDYLL

by H.G. Wells

1896




THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTER IN THE STORY

I.

If you (presuming you are of the sex that does such things)--if
you had gone into the Drapery Emporium--which is really only
magnificent for shop--of Messrs. Antrobus & Co.--a perfectly
fictitious "Co.," by the bye--of Putney, on the 14th of August,
1895, had turned to the right-hand side, where the blocks of
white linen and piles of blankets rise up to the rail from which
the pink and blue prints depend, you might have been served by
the central figure of this story that is now beginning. He would
have come forward, bowing and swaying, he would have extended two