Part 2

I was ready at six the next morning, and I wore gloves.

“Now, don’t ride into the holes in the street”—one is obliged to give such instructions in Chicago—“and don’t look at anything you see. Don’t be afraid. You’re all right. Now, then! You’re off!”

“Oh, Teddy, don’t ride so close to me,” I quavered.

“I’m forty feet away from you,” he said.

“Then double it,” I said. “You’re choking me by your proximity.”

“Let’s cross the railroad tracks just for practice,” he said, when it was too late for me to expostulate. “Stand up on your pedals and ride fast, and—”

“Hold on, please do,” I shrieked. “I’m falling off. Get out of my way. I seem to be turning—”

He scorched ahead, and I headed straight for the switchman’s hut, rounded it neatly, and leaned myself and my wheel against the side of it, helpless with laughter.

A red Irish face, with a short black pipe in its mouth, thrust itself out of the tiny window just in front of me, and a voice with a rich brogue exclaimed:

“As purty a bit of riding as iver Oi see!”

“Wasn’t it?” I cried. “You couldn’t do it.”

“Oi wouldn’t thry! Oi’d rather tackle a railroad train going at full spheed thin wan av thim runaway critturs.”

“Get down from there,” hissed my brother so close to my ear that it made me bite my tongue.

I obediently scrambled down. Ted’s face was very red.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to enter into immediate conversation with a man like that. What do you suppose that man thought of you?”

“Oh, perhaps he saw my gloves and took me for a lady,” I pleaded.

Ted grinned and assisted me to mount.

When I successfully turned the corner by making Ted fall back out of sight, we rode away along the boulevard in silence for a while, for my conversation when I am on a wheel is generally limited to shrieks, ejaculations, and snatches of prayer. I never talk to be amusing.

“I say,” said my brother, hesitatingly, “I wear a No. 8 glove and a No. 10 stocking.”

“I’ve always thought you had large hands and feet,” I said, ignoring the hint.

He giggled.

“No, now, really. I wish you’d write that down somewhere. You can get those things so cheap in Paris.”

“You are supposing the case of my return, or of Christmas intervening, or—a present of some kind, I suppose.”

“Well, no; not exactly. Although you know I am always broke—”

“Don’t I, though?”

“And that I am still in debt—”

“Because papa insists upon your putting some money in the bank every month—”

“Yes, and the result is that I never get my head above water. I owe you twenty now.”