That may be a slight exaggeration. She knew, perhaps, that he was the
new junior teller in the Exchange Bank and that he came from the
Maritime Provinces, and that nobody knew who his people were, and
that he had never been in a canoe in his life till he came to
Mariposa, and that he sat four pews back in Dean Drone's church, and
that his salary was eight hundred dollars. Beyond that, she didn't
know a thing about him. She presumed, however, that the reason why he
went past so fast was because he didn't dare to go slow.

This, of course, was perfectly correct. Ever since the day when Mr.
Pupkin met Zena in the Main Street he used to come past the house on
his bicycle just after bank hours. He would have gone past twenty
times a day but he was afraid to. As he came up Oneida Street, he
used to pedal faster and faster,--he never meant to, but he couldn't
help it,--till he went past the piazza where Zena was sitting at an
awful speed with his little yellow blazer flying in the wind. In a
second he had disappeared in a buzz and a cloud of dust, and the
momentum of it carried him clear out into the country for miles and
miles before he ever dared to pause or look back.

Then Mr. Pupkin would ride in a huge circuit about the country,
trying to think he was looking at the crops, and sooner or later his
bicycle would be turned towards the town again and headed for Oneida
Street, and would get going quicker and quicker and quicker, till the
pedals whirled round with a buzz and he came past the judge's house
again, like a bullet out of a gun. He rode fifteen miles to pass the
house twice, and even then it took all the nerve that he had.

The people on Oneida Street thought that Mr. Pupkin was crazy, but
Zena Pepperleigh knew that he was not. Already, you see, there was a