expression in his eyes faded slowly to abstract meditation.

"She WAS a stunning girl," he said. "I wonder if I shall ever set
eyes on her again. And she knew how to ride, too! Wonder what she
thought of me."

The phrase 'bloomin' Dook' floated into his mind with a certain
flavour of comfort.

He lit a cigarette, and sat smoking and meditating. He did not
even look up when vehicles passed. It was perhaps ten minutes
before he roused himself. "What rot it is! What's the good of
thinking such things," he said. "I'm only a blessed draper's
assistant." (To be exact, he did not say blessed. The service of
a shop may polish a man's exterior ways, but the 'prentices'
dormitory is an indifferent school for either manners or morals.)
He stood up and began wheeling his machine towards Esher. It was
going to be a beautiful day, and the hedges and trees and the
open country were all glorious to his town-tired eyes. But it was
a little different from the elation of his start.

"Look at the gentleman wizzer bicitle," said a nursemaid on the
path to a personage in a perambulator. That healed him a little.
"'Gentleman wizzer bicitle,'--'bloomin' Dook'--I can't look so
very seedy," he said to himself.

"I WONDER--I should just like to know--"

There was something very comforting in the track of HER pneumatic
running straight and steady along the road before him. It must be