leaking. It's a most interesting road, birds and trees, I've no
doubt, and wayside flowers, and there's nothing I should enjoy
more than watching them. But I can't. Get me on that machine, and
I have to go. Get me on anything, and I have to go. And I don't
want to go a bit. WHY should a man rush about like a rocket, all
pace and fizzle? Why? It makes me furious. I can assure you, sir,
I go scorching along the road, and cursing aloud at myself for
doing it. A quiet, dignified, philosophical man, that's what I
am--at bottom; and here I am dancing with rage and swearing like
a drunken tinker at a perfect stranger--

"But my day's wasted. I've lost all that country road, and now
I'm on the fringe of London. And I might have loitered all the
morning! Ugh! Thank Heaven, sir, you have not the irritable
temperament, that you are not goaded to madness by your
endogenous sneers, by the eternal wrangling of an uncomfortable
soul and body. I tell you, I lead a cat and dog life--But what IS
the use of talking?--It's all of a piece!"

He tossed his head with unspeakable self-disgust, pitched the
lemon squash into his mouth, paid for it, and without any further
remark strode to the door. Mr. Hoopdriver was still wondering
what to say when his interlocutor vanished. There was a noise of
a foot spurning the gravel, and when Mr. Hoopdriver reached the
doorway, the man in drab was a score of yards Londonward. He had
already gathered pace. He pedalled with ill-suppressed anger, and
his head was going down. In another moment he flew swiftly out of
sight under the railway arch, and Mr. Hoopdriver saw him no more.