“Yes?  She’s a real fine-appearing young lady,” said Mrs. Winslow.

Both the cyclists exulted.  Neither of them, however, was prepared to behold the track made and the fence down the very next morning when they came out, about ten o’clock, to the west side of Miss Hopkins’s boundaries.

“As sure as you live, Maggie,” exclaimed Lorania, eagerly, “he’s got it all done!  Now that is something like a lover.  I only hope his heart won’t be bruised as black and blue as I am with the wheel!”

“Shuey says the only harm your falls do you is to take away your confidence,” said Mrs. Ellis.

“He wouldn’t say so if he could see my knees!” retorted Miss Hopkins.

Mrs. Ellis, it will be observed, sheered away from the love-affairs of Mr. Cyril Winslow.  She had not yet made up her mind.  And Mrs. Ellis, who had been married, did not jump at conclusions regarding the heart of man so rapidly as her spinster friend.  She preferred to talk of the bicycle.  Nor did Miss Hopkins refuse the subject.  To her at this moment the most important object on the globe was the shining machine which she would allow no hand but hers to oil and dust.  Both Mrs. Ellis and she were simply prostrated (as to their mental powers) by this new sport.  They could not think nor talk nor read of anything but the wheel.  This is a peculiarity of the bicyclist.  No other sport appears to make such havoc with the mind.

One can learn to swim without describing his sensations to every casual acquaintance or hunting up the natatorial columns in the newspapers.  One may enjoy riding a horse and yet go about his ordinary business with an equal mind.  One learns to play golf and still remains a peaceful citizen who can discuss politics with interest.  But the cyclist, man or woman, is soaked in every pore with the delight and the perils of wheeling.  He talks of it (as he thinks of it) incessantly.  For this fatuous passion there is one excuse.  Other sports have the fearful delight of danger and the pleasure of the consciousness of dexterity and the dogged Anglo-Saxon joy of combat and victory; but no other sport restores to middle age the pure, exultant, muscular intoxication of childhood.  Only on the wheel can an elderly woman feel as she felt when she ran and leaped and frolicked amid the flowers as a child.

Lorania, of course, no longer jumped or ran; she kicked in the Delsarte exercises, but it was a measured, calculated, one may say cold-blooded kick, which limbered her muscles but did not restore her youthful glow of soul.  Her legs and not her spirits pranced.  The same thing may be said for Margaret Ellis.  Now, between their accidents, they obtained glimpses of an exquisite exhilaration.  And there was also to be counted the approval of their consciences, for they felt that no Turkish bath could wring out moisture from their systems like half an hour’s pumping at the bicycle treadles.  Lorania during the month