Each one of us had a little hand-bag hung on our machine, and Mr. Poplington said we needn’t take anything to eat, for there was inns to be found everywhere in England.  Hannah started me off nicely by pushing my tricycle until I got it going, and Miss Pondar waved her handkerchief from the cottage door.  When Hannah left me I went along rather slow at first, but when I got used to the proper motion I began to do better, and was very sure it wouldn’t take me long to catch up with Jone, who was still worm-fencing his way along the road.  When I got entirely away from the houses, and began to smell the hedges and grassy banks so close to my nose, and feel myself gliding along over the smooth white road, my spirits began to soar like a bird, and I almost felt like singing.

The few people I met didn’t seem to think it was anything wonderful for a woman to ride on a tricycle, and I soon began to feel as proper as if I was walking on a sidewalk.  Once I came very near tangling myself up with the legs of a horse who was pulling a cart.  I forgot that it was the proper thing in this country to turn to the left, and not to the right, but I gave a quick twist to my helm and just missed the cart-wheel, but it was a close scratch.  This turning to the right, instead of to the left, was a mistake Jone made two or three times when he began to drive me in England, but he got over it, and since my grazing the cart it’s not likely I shall forget it.  As I breathed a sigh of relief after escaping this danger I took in a breath full of the scent of wild roses that nearly covered a bit of hedge, and my spirits rose again.

I had asked Jone and Mr. Poplington to go ahead, because I knew I could do a great deal better if I worked along by myself for a while, without being told what I ought to do and what I oughtn’t to do.  There is nothing that bothers me so much as to have people try to teach me things when I am puzzling them out for myself.  But now I found that although they could not be far ahead, I couldn’t see them, on account of the twists in the road and the high hedges, and so I put on steam and went along at a fine rate, sniffing the breeze like a charger of the battlefield.  Before very long I came to a place where the road forked, but the road to the left seemed like a lane leading to somebody’s house, so I kept on in what was plainly the main road, which made a little turn where it forked.  Looking out ahead of me, to see if I could catch sight of the two men, I could not see a sign of them, but I did see that I was on the top of a long hill that seemed to lead on and down and on and down, with no end to it.