“Oh yes,” she answered.  “I know them both; and, as I have mentioned that your meeting with them seemed funny to me, I suppose I ought to tell you the reason.  Some time ago a photographer in Walford, who has taken a portrait of me and also of Miss Putney and Miss Burton, took it into his head to print the three on one card and expose them for sale with a ridiculous inscription under them.  This created a great deal of talk, and Miss Putney made the photographer destroy his negative and all the cards he had on hand.  After that we were talked about as a trio, and, I expect, a good deal of fun was made of us.  And now it seems a little odd—­does it not?—­that you have become acquainted with all the members of this trio as soon as you left Walford.  But I must not keep you in this way.”  And she rose.

Now was my opportunity to make known my desire to be kept, but before I could do so the boy hurriedly came into the room.

“The Dago wants to see you,” he said.  “He’s in an awful hurry.”

“Excuse me,” said Mrs. Chester.  “It is that Italian who was singing outside last night.  I thought he had gone.  Would you mind waiting a few minutes?”

It was getting harder and harder to enunciate my proposition to make a sojourn at the inn.  I wished that I had spoken sooner.  It is so much easier to do things promptly.

While I was waiting the elderly woman came in.  “Do you want the boy to take your little bag out and strap it on?” said she.

Evidently there was no want of desire to speed the departing guest.  “Oh, I will attend to that myself,” said I, but I made no step to do it.  When my hostess came back I wanted to be there.

Presently she did come back.  She ran in hurriedly, and her face was flushed.  “Here is a very bad piece of business,” she said.  “That man’s bear has eaten the tire off one of your wheels!”

“What!” I exclaimed, and my heart bounded within me.  Here, perhaps, was the solution of all my troubles.  If by any happy chance my bicycle had been damaged, of course I could not go on.

“Come and see,” she said, and, following her through the back hall door, we entered a large, enclosed yard.  Not far from the house was a shed, and in front of this lay my bicycle on its side in an apparently disabled condition.  An Italian, greatly agitated, was standing by it.  He was hatless, and his tangled black hair hung over his swarthy face.  At the other end of the yard was a whitish-brown bear, not very large, and chained to a post.

I approached my bicycle, earnestly hoping that the bear had been attempting to ride it, but I found that he had been trying to do something very different.  He had torn the pneumatic tire from one of the wheels, and nearly the whole of it was lying scattered about in little bits upon the ground.

“How did this happen?” I said to the Italian, feeling very much inclined to give him a dollar for the good offices of the beast.