brightness of the day and the day-old sense of freedom fought an
uphill fight against his intolerable vexation at that abominable
encounter, and had still to win it when he reached Haslemere. A
great brown shadow, a monstrous hatred of the other man in brown,
possessed him. He had conceived the brilliant idea of abandoning
Portsmouth, or at least giving up the straight way to his
fellow-wayfarers, and of striking out boldly to the left,
eastward. He did not dare to stop at any of the inviting
public-houses in the main street of Haslemere, but turned up a
side way and found a little beer-shop, the Good Hope, wherein to
refresh himself. And there he ate and gossipped condescendingly
with an aged labourer, assuming the while for his own private
enjoyment the attributes of a Lost Heir, and afterwards mounted
and rode on towards Northchapel, a place which a number of
finger-posts conspired to boom, but which some insidious turning
prevented him from attaining.



HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER REACHED MIDHURST

XIV

It was one of my uncle's profoundest remarks that human beings
are the only unreasonable creatures. This observation was so far
justified by Mr. Hoopdriver that, after spending the morning
tortuously avoiding the other man in brown and the Young Lady in
Grey, he spent a considerable part of the afternoon in thinking
about the Young Lady in Grey, and contemplating in an optimistic
spirit the possibilities of seeing her again. Memory and