quiet and greenery, and one mucked about as the desire took one,
without a soul to see, and here was no wailing of "Sayn," no
folding of remnants, no voice to shout, "Hoopdriver, forward!"
And once he almost ran over something wonderful, a little, low,
red beast with a yellowish tail, that went rushing across the
road before him. It was the first weasel he had ever seen in his
cockney life. There were miles of this, scores of miles of this
before him, pinewood and oak forest, purple, heathery moorland
and grassy down, lush meadows, where shining rivers wound their
lazy way, villages with square-towered, flint churches, and
rambling, cheap, and hearty inns, clean, white, country towns,
long downhill stretches, where one might ride at one's ease
(overlooking a jolt or so), and far away, at the end of it
all,--the sea.

What mattered a fly or so in the dawn of these delights? Perhaps
he had been dashed a minute by the shameful episode of the Young
Lady in Grey, and perhaps the memory of it was making itself a
little lair in a corner of his brain from which it could distress
him in the retrospect by suggesting that he looked like a fool;
but for the present that trouble was altogether in abeyance. The
man in drab--evidently a swell--had spoken to him as his equal,
and the knees of his brown suit and the chequered stockings were
ever before his eyes. (Or, rather, you could see the stockings by
carrying the head a little to one side.) And to feel, little by
little, his mastery over this delightful, treacherous machine,
growing and growing! Every half-mile or so his knees reasserted
themselves, and he dismounted and sat awhile by the roadside.

It was at a charming little place between Esher and Cobham, where