this was scarcely brotherly behaviour. Of course it wasn't! The
sight of the other man gripping her so familiarly enraged him
frightfully; he leapt over the counter forthwith and gave chase.
They ran round the shop and up an iron staircase into the Keep,
and so out upon the Ripley road. For some time they kept dodging
in and out of a wayside hotel with two front doors and an inn
yard. The other man could not run very fast because he had hold
of the Young Lady in Grey, but Mr. Hoopdriver was hampered by the
absurd behaviour of his legs. They would not stretch out; they
would keep going round and round as if they were on the treadles
of a wheel, so that he made the smallest steps conceivable. This
dream came to no crisis. The chase seemed to last an interminable
time, and all kinds of people, heathkeepers, shopmen, policemen,
the old man in the Keep, the angry man in drab, the barmaid at
the Unicorn, men with flying-machines, people playing billiards
in the doorways, silly, headless figures, stupid cocks and hens
encumbered with parcels and umbrellas and waterproofs, people
carrying bedroom candles, and such-like riffraff, kept getting in
his way and annoying him, although he sounded his electric bell,
and said, "Wonderful, wonderful!" at every corner....



HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WENT TO HASLEMERE

XIII

There was some little delay in getting Mr. Hoopdriver's
breakfast, so that after all he was not free to start out of
Guildford until just upon the stroke of nine. He wheeled his