A Bicycle of Cathay | Page 2

accompanied his mother to my lodging I had given him small coins.
I was beginning to move more rapidly along the little path, well worn by many rubber tires, which edged the broad roadway, when I perceived the doctor's daughter standing at the gate of her father's front yard. As I knew her very well, and she happened to be standing there and looking in my direction, I felt that it would be the proper thing for me to stop and speak to her, and so I dismounted and proceeded to roll my bicycle up to the gate.
As the doctor's daughter stood looking over the gate, her hands clasped the tops of the two central pickets.
"Good-morning," said she. "I suppose, from your carrying baggage, that you are starting off for your vacation. How far do you expect to go on your wheel, and do you travel alone?"
"My only plan," I answered, "is to ride over the hills and far away! How far I really do not know; and I shall be alone except for this good companion." And as I said this I patted the handle-bar of my bicycle.
"Your wheel does seem to be a sort of a companion," she said; "not so good as a horse, but better than nothing. I should think, travelling all by yourself in this way, you would have quite a friendly feeling for it. Did you ever think of giving it a name?"
"Oh yes," said I. "I have named it. I call it a 'Bicycle of Cathay.'"
"Is there any sense in such a name?" she asked. "It is like part of a quotation from Tennyson, isn't it? I forget the first of it."
"You are right," I said. "'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.' I cannot tell you exactly why, but that seems to suggest a good name for a bicycle."
"But your machine has two wheels," said she. "Therefore you ought to say, 'Better one hundred years of Europe than two cycles of Cathay.'"
"I bow to custom," said I. "Every one speaks of a bicycle as a wheel, and I shall not introduce the plural into the name of my good steed."
"And you don't know where your Cathay is to be?" she asked.
I smiled and shook my head. "No," I answered, "but I hope my cycle will carry me safely through it."
The doctor's daughter looked past me across the road. "I wish I were a man," said she, "and could go off as I pleased, as you do! It must be delightfully independent."
I was about to remark that too much independence is not altogether delightful, but she suddenly spoke:
"You carry very little with you for a long journey," and as she said this she grasped the pickets of the gate more tightly. I could see the contraction of the muscles of her white hands. It seemed as if she were restraining something.
"Oh, this isn't all my baggage," I replied. "I sent on a large bag to Waterton. I suppose I shall be there in a couple of days, and then I shall forward the bag to some other place."
"I do not suppose you have packed up any medicine among your other things?" she asked. "You don't look as if you very often needed medicine."
I laughed as I replied that in the course of my life I had taken but little.
"But if your cycle starts off rolling early in the morning," she said, "or keeps on late in the evening, you ought to be able to defend yourself against malaria. I do not know what sort of a country Cathay may be, but I should not be a bit surprised if you found it full of mists and morning vapors. Malaria has a fancy for strong people, you know. Just wait here a minute, please," and with that she turned and ran into the house.
I had liked the doctor's daughter ever since I had begun to know her, although at first I had found it a little hard to become acquainted with her.
She was the treasurer of the literary society of the village, and I was its secretary. We had to work together sometimes, and I found her a very straightforward girl in her accounts and in every other way.
In about a minute she returned, carrying a little pasteboard box.
"Here are some one-grain quinine capsules," she said. "They have no taste, and I am quite sure that if you get into a low country it would be a good thing for you to take at least one of them every morning. People may have given you all sorts of things for your journey, but I do not believe any one has given you this." And she handed me the box over the top of the gate.
I did not say that her practical little