something somewhere, he didn't remember exactly. The energetic friend had
been caustic.

"I've no intention of sympathising with you," he had remarked; "because
you deserve all you get. You ass, you know when it's possible to get
smashed up over anything you're safe to do it, so what on earth do you
expect when you take up a thing like this?"

"Instant death every minute," Peter had truly replied. (His nerves had
been a little shaken by his last ride, which had set his trouser-leg on
fire suddenly, and nearly, as he remarked, burnt him to death.) "But I
go on. I expect the worst, but I am resigned. The hero is not he who
feels no fear, for that were brutal and irrational."

"What do you _do_ it for?" his friend had querulously and superfluously
demanded.

"It's so frightfully funny," Peter had said, reflecting, "that I should
be doing it. That's why, I suppose. It makes me laugh. You might take to
the fiddle if you wanted a good laugh. I take to my motor-bicycle. It's
the only way to cheer oneself up when life is disappointing, to go and do
something entirely ridiculous. I used to stand on my head when I'd been
rowed or sat upon, or when there was a beastly wind; it cheered me a lot.
I've given that up now; so I motor-bicycle. Besides," he had added, "you
said I must go in for something. You wouldn't like it if I did my
embroidery all day."

But on the days when he had been motor-bicycling, Peter had to do a great
deal of embroidery in the evenings, for the sake of the change.