Swaying frightfully from side to side, and wrenched from capsizing the wheel by the full exercise of Shuey’s great muscles, Miss Hopkins reeled over the track.  At short intervals she lost her pedals, and her feet, for some strange reason, instead of seeking the lost, simply curled up as if afraid of being hit.  She gripped the steering-handles with an iron grasp, and her turns were such as an engine makes.  Nevertheless, Shuey got her up the track for some hundred feet, and then by a herculean sweep turned her round and rolled her back to the block.  It was at this painful moment, when her whole being was concentrated on the effort to keep from toppling against Shuey, and even more to keep from toppling away from him, that Lorania’s strained gaze suddenly fell on the frightened and sympathetic face of Mrs. Winslow.  The good woman saw no fun in the spectacle, but rather an awful risk to life and limb.  Their eyes met.  Not a change passed over Miss Hopkins’s features; but she looked up as soon as she was safe on the ground, and smiled.  In a moment, before Mrs. Winslow could decide whether to run or to stand her ground, she saw the cyclist approaching—­on foot.

“Won’t you come in and sit down?” she said, smiling.  “We are trying our new wheels.”

And because she did not know how to refuse, Mrs. Winslow suffered herself to be handed over the fence.  She sat on the bench beside Miss Hopkins in the prim attitude which had pertained to gentility in her youth, her hands loosely clasping each other, her feet crossed at the ankles.

“It’s an awful sight, ain’t it?” she breathed, “those little shiny things; I don’t see how you ever git on them.”

“I don’t get on them,” said Miss Hopkins.  “The only way I shall ever learn to start off is to start without the pedals.  Does your son ride, Mrs. Winslow?”

“No, ma’am,” said Mrs. Winslow; “but he knows how.  When he was a boy nothing would do but he must have a bicycle, one of those things most as big as a mill wheel, and if you fell off you broke yourself somewhere, sure.  I always expected he’d be brought home in pieces.  So I don’t think he’d have any manner of difficulty.  Why, look at your friend; she’s ’most riding alone!”

“She could always do everything better than I,” cried Lorania, with ungrudging admiration.  “See how she jumps off!  Now I can’t jump off any more than I can jump on.  It seems so ridiculous to be told to press hard on the pedal on the side where you want to jump, and swing your further leg over first, and cut a kind of a figure eight with your legs, and turn your wheel the way you don’t want to go—­all at once.  While I’m trying to think of all those directions I always fall off.  I got that wheel only yesterday, and fell before I even got away from the block.  One of my arms looks like a Persian ribbon.”

Mrs. Winslow cried out in unfeigned sympathy.  She wished Miss Hopkins would use her liniment that she used for Cyril when he was hurt by the burglars at the bank; he was bruised “terrible.”