“He’s too sweet,” said the duchess. “I’m so glad we went.”

“He has such nice manners, hasn’t he?” said Lady Hodmarsh.

“You didn’t really expect him to eat his peas with a knife, did you?” I asked.

“I wish he had,” said Scallion. “It would have been so picturesque.”

“I believe it’s very difficult,” said the duchess. “I’ve tried over and over again and I can never get them to stay on.”

“You have to spear them,” said Scallion.

“Not at all,” retorted the duchess. “You have to balance them on the flat, and they roll like the devil.”

“What did you think of Mrs. Driffield?” asked Lady Hodmarsh.

“I suppose she serves her purpose,” said the duchess.

“He’s so old, poor darling, he must have someone to look after him. You know she was a hospital nurse?”

“Oh, was she?” said the duchess. “I thought perhaps she’d been his secretary or typist or something.”

“She’s quite nice,” said Lady Hodmarsh, warmly defending a friend.

“Oh, quite.”

“He had a long illness about twenty years ago, and she was his nurse then, and after he got well he married her.”

“Funny how men will do that. She must have been years younger than him. She can’t be more than—what?— forty or forty-five.”

“No, I shouldn’t think so. Forty-seven, say. I’m told she’s done a great deal for him. I mean, she’s made him quite presentable. Alroy Kear told me that before that he was almost too bohemian.”

“As a rule authors’ wives are odious.”

“It’s such a bore having to have them, isn’t it?”

“Crushing. I wonder they don’t see that themselves.”

“Poor wretches, they often suffer from the delusion that people find them interesting,” I murmured.

We reached Tercanbury, dropped the duchess at the station, and drove on.

V

IT WAS true that Edward Driffield had taught me to bicycle. That was indeed how I first made his acquaintance. I do not know how long the safety bicycle had been invented, but I know that it was not common in the remote part of Kent in which I lived and when you saw someone speeding along on solid tires you turned round and looked till he was out of sight. It was still a matter for jocularity on the part of middle-aged gentlemen who said Shank’s pony was good enough for them, and for trepidation on the part of elderly ladies who made a dash for the side of the road when they saw one coming. I had been for some time filled with envy of the boys whom I saw riding into the school grounds on their bicycles, and it gave a pretty opportunity for showing off when you entered the gateway without holding on to the handles. I had persuaded my uncle to let me have one at the beginning of the summer holidays, and though my aunt was against it, since she said I should only break my neck, he had yielded to my pertinacity more willingly because I was of course paying for it out of my own money. I ordered it before school broke up and a few days later the carrier brought it over from Tercanbury.

I was determined to learn to ride it by myself and chaps at school had told me that they had learned in half an hour. I tried and tried and at last came to the conclusion that I was abnormally stupid (I am inclined now to think that I was exaggerating), but even after my pride was sufficiently humbled for me to allow the gardener to hold me up I seemed at the end of the first morning no nearer to being able to get on by myself than at the beginning. Next day, however, thinking that the carriage drive at the vicarage was too winding to give a fellow a proper chance, I wheeled the bicycle to a road not far away which I knew was perfectly flat and straight and so solitary that no one would see me making a fool of myself. I tried several times to mount, but fell off each time. I barked my shins against the pedals and got very hot and bothered. After I had been doing this for about an hour, though I began to think that God did not intend me to ride a bicycle, but was determined (unable to bear the thought of the sarcasms of my uncle, his representative at Blackstable) to do so all the same, to my disgust I saw two people on bicycles coming along the deserted road. I immediately wheeled my machine to the side and sat down on a stile, looking out to sea in a nonchalant way as though I had been for a ride and were just sitting there wrapped in contemplation of the vasty ocean. I kept my eyes dreamily averted from the two persons who were advancing toward me, but I felt that they were coming nearer, and through the corner of my eye I saw that they were a man and a woman. As they passed me the woman swerved violently to my side of the road and, crashing against me, fell to the ground.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I knew I should fall off the moment I saw you.”

It was impossible under the circumstances to preserve my appearance of abstraction and, blushing furiously, I said that it didn’t matter at all.

The man had got off as she fell.

“You haven’t hurt yourself?” he asked.

“Oh, no.”

I recognized him then as Edward Driffield, the author I had seen walking with the curate a few days before.

“I’m just learning to ride,” said his companion. “And I fall off whenever I see anything in the road.”

“Aren’t you the vicar’s nephew?” said Driffield. “I saw you the other day. Galloway told me who you were. This is my wife.”

She held out her hand with an oddly frank gesture and when I took it gave mine a warm and hearty pressure. She smiled with her lips and with her eyes and there was in her smile something that even then I recognized as

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