“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Ellis.

“Maggie, what makes you think he is falling in love with Sibyl?”

Mrs. Ellis laughed.  “I dare say he isn’t in love with Sibyl,” said she.  “I think the main reason was his always riding by here instead of taking the shorter road down the other street.”

“Does he always ride by here?  I hadn’t noticed.”

“Always!” said Mrs. Ellis. “I have noticed.”

“I am sorry for him,” said Lorania, musingly.  “I think Sibyl is very much taken with that young Captain Carr at the Arsenal.  Young girls always affect the army.  He is a nice fellow, but I don’t think he is the man Winslow is.  Now, Maggie, advise me about the suit.  I don’t want to look like the escaped fat lady of a museum.”

Lorania thought no more of Sibyl’s love-affairs.  If she thought of the Winslows, it was to wish that Mrs. Winslow would sell or rent her pasture, which, in addition to her own and Mrs. Ellis’s pastures thrown into one, would make such a delightful bicycle-track.

The Winslow house was very different from the two villas that were the pride of Fairport.  A little story-and-a-half cottage peeped out on the road behind the tall maples that were planted when Winslow was a boy.  But there was a wonderful green velvet lawn, and the tulips and sweet-peas and pansies that blazed softly nearer the house were as beautiful as those over which Miss Lorania’s gardener toiled and worried.

Mrs. Winslow was a little woman who showed the fierce struggle of her early life only in the deeper lines between her delicate eyebrows and the expression of melancholy patience in her brown eyes.

She always wore a widow’s cap and a black gown.  In the mornings she donned a blue figured apron of stout and serviceable stuff; in the afternoon an apron of that sheer white lawn used by bishops and smart young waitresses.  Of an afternoon, in warm weather, she was accustomed to sit on the eastern piazza, next to the Hopkins place, and rock as she sewed.  She was thus sitting and sewing when she beheld an extraordinary procession cross the Hopkins lawn.  First marched the tall trainer, Shuey Cardigan, who worked by day in the Lossing furniture-factory, and gave bicycle lessons at the armory evenings.  He was clad in a white sweater and buff leggings, and was wheeling a lady’s bicycle.  Behind him walked Miss Hopkins in a gray suit, the skirt of which only came to her ankles—­she always so dignified in her toilets.

“Land’s sakes!” gasped Mrs. Winslow, “if she ain’t going to ride a bike!  Well, what next?”