What really happened next was the sneaking (for no other word does justice to the cautious and circuitous movements of her) of Mrs. Winslow to the stable, which had one window facing the Hopkins pasture.  No cows were grazing in the pasture.  All around the grassy plateau twinkled a broad brownish-yellow track.  At one side of this track a bench had been placed, and a table, pleasing to the eye, with jugs and glasses.  Mrs. Ellis, in a suit of the same undignified brevity and ease as Miss Hopkins’s, sat on the bench supporting her own wheel.  Shuey Cardigan was drawn up to his full six feet of strength, and, one arm in the air, was explaining the theory of the balance of power.  It was an uncanny moment to Lorania.  She eyed the glistening, restless thing that slipped beneath her hand, and her fingers trembled.  If she could have fled in secret she would.  But since flight was not possible, she assumed a firm expression.  Mrs. Ellis wore a smile of studied and sickly cheerfulness.

“Don’t you think it very high?” said Lorania.  “I can never get up on it!”

“It will be by the block at first,” said Shuey, in the soothing tones of a jockey to a nervous horse; “it’s easy by the block.  And I’ll be steadying it, of course.”

“Don’t they have any with larger saddles?  It is a very small saddle.”

“They’re all of a size.  It wouldn’t look sporty larger; it would look like a special make.  Yous wouldn’t want a special make.”

Lorania thought that she would be thankful for a special make, but she suppressed the unsportsmanlike thought.  “The pedals are very small too, Cardigan.  Are you sure they can hold me?”

“They would hold two of ye, Miss Hopkins.  Now sit aisy and graceful as ye would on your chair at home, hold the shoulders back, and toe in a bit on the pedals—­ye won’t be skinning your ankles so much then—­and hold your foot up ready to get the other pedal.  Hold light on the steering-bar.  Push off hard. Now!”

“Will you hold me?  I am going—­Oh, it’s like riding an earthquake!”

Here Shuey made a run, letting the wheel have its own wild way—­to reach the balance.  “Keep the front wheel under you!” he cried, cheerfully.  “Niver mind where you go.  Keep a-pedalling; whatever you do, keep a-pedalling!”

“But I haven’t got but one pedal!” gasped the rider.

“Ye lost it?”

“No; I never had but one!  Oh, don’t let me fall!”

“Oh, ye lost it in the beginning; now, then, I’ll hold it steady, and you get both feet right.  Here we go!”