He said: "Have you overhauled it?"
I said: "I have not, nor is anyone else going to overhaul it. The thing is now in working order, and it is going to remain in working order till we start."
I have had experience of this "overhauling." There was a man at Folkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees. He proposed one evening we should go for a long bicycle ride together on the following day, and I agreed. I got up early, for me; I made an effort, and was pleased with myself. He came half an hour late: I was waiting for him in the garden. It was a lovely day. He said —
"That’s a good – looking machine of yours. How does it run?"
"Oh, like most of them!" I answered; "easily enough in the morning; goes a little stiffly after lunch."
He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook it violently.
I said: "Don’t do that; you’ll hurt it."
I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to him. Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper person to shake it. I felt much as I should had he started whacking my dog.
He said: "This front wheel wobbles."
I said: "It doesn’t if you don’t wobble it." It didn’t wobble, as a matter of fact – nothing worth calling a wobble.
He said: "This is dangerous; have you got a screw – hammer?"
I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did know something about the business. I went to the tool shed to see what I could find. When I came back he was sitting on the ground with the front wheel between his legs. He was playing with it, twiddling it round between his fingers; the remnant of the machine was lying on the gravel path beside him.
He said: "Something has happened to this front wheel of yours."
"It looks like it, doesn’t it?" I answered. But he was the sort of man that never understands satire.
He said: "It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong."
I said: "Don’t you trouble about it any more; you will make yourself tired. Let us put it back and get off."
He said: "We may as well see what is the matter with it, now it is out." He talked as though it had dropped out by accident.
Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and out rolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls.
"Catch 'em!" he shouted; "catch 'em! We mustn’t lose any of them." He was quite excited about them.
We grovelled round for half an hour, and found sixteen. He said he hoped we had got them all, because, if not, it would make a serious difference to the machine. He said there was nothing you should be more careful about in taking a bicycle to pieces than seeing you did not lose any of the balls. He explained that you ought to count them as you took them out, and see that exactly the same number went back in each place. I promised, if ever I took a bicycle to pieces I would remember his advice.
I put the balls for safety in my hat, and I put my hat upon the doorstep. It was not a sensible thing to do, I admit. As a matter of fact, it was a silly thing to do. I am not as a rule addle – headed; his influence must have affected me.
He then said that while he was about it he would see to the chain for me, and at once began taking off the gear – case. I did try to persuade him from that. I told him what an experienced friend of mine once said to me solemnly —
"If anything goes wrong with your gear – case, sell the machine and buy a new one; it comes cheaper."
He said: "People talk like that who understand nothing about machines. Nothing is easier than taking off a gear – case."
I had to confess he was right. In less than five minutes he had the gear – case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling for screws. He said it was always a mystery to him the way screws disappeared.
We were still looking for the screws when Ethelbertha came out. She seemed surprised to find us there; she said she thought we had started hours ago.
He said: "We shan’t be long now. I’m just helping your husband to overhaul this machine of his. It’s a good machine; but they all want going over occasionally."
Ethelbertha said: "If you want to wash yourselves when you have done you might go into the back kitchen, if you don’t mind; the girls have just finished the bedrooms."
She told me that if she met Kate they would probably go for a sail; but that in any case she would be back to lunch. I would have given a sovereign to be going with her. I was getting heartily sick of standing about watching this fool breaking up my bicycle.
Common sense continued to whisper to me: "Stop him, before he does any more mischief. You have a right to protect your own property from the ravages of a lunatic. Take him by the scruff of the neck, and kick him out of the gate!"
But I am weak when it comes to hurting other people’s feelings, and I let him muddle on.
He gave up looking for the rest of the screws. He said screws had a knack of turning up when you least expected them; and that now he would see to the chain. He tightened it till it would not move; next he loosened it until it was twice as loose as it was before. Then he said we had better think about getting the front wheel back into its place again.
I held the fork open, and he worried with the wheel. At the end of ten minutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I should handle the wheel; and we changed places. At the end of his first minute he dropped the machine, and took a short walk round the croquet lawn, with his hands pressed together between his thighs. He explained as he walked that the thing to be careful about was to avoid getting your fingers pinched between the forks and the spokes of the wheel. I replied I was convinced, from my own experience, that there was much truth in what he said. He wrapped himself up in a couple of dusters, and we commenced again. At length we did get the thing into position; and the moment it was in position he burst out laughing.
I said: "What’s the joke?"
He said: "Well, I am an ass!"
It was the first thing he had said that made me respect him. I asked him what had led him to the discovery.
He said: "We’ve forgotten the balls!"
I looked for my hat; it was lying topsy – turvy in the middle of the path, and Ethelbertha’s favourite hound was swallowing the balls as fast as he could pick them up.
"He will kill himself," said Ebbson – I have never met him since that day, thank the Lord; but I think his name was Ebbson—"they are solid steel."
I said: "I am not troubling about the dog. He has had a bootlace and a packet of needles already this week. Nature’s the best guide; puppies seem to require this kind of stimulant. What I am thinking about is my bicycle."
He was of a cheerful disposition. He said: "Well, we must put back all we can find, and trust to Providence."
We found eleven. We fixed six on one side and five on the other, and half an hour later the wheel was in its place again. It need hardly be added that it really did wobble now; a child might have noticed it. Ebbson said it would do for the present. He appeared to be getting a bit tired himself. If I had let him, he would, I believe, at this point have gone home. I was determined now, however, that he should stop and finish; I had abandoned all thoughts of a ride. My pride in the machine he had killed. My only interest lay now in seeing him scratch and bump and pinch himself. I revived his drooping spirits with a glass of beer and some judicious praise. I said:
"Watching you do this is of real use to me. It is not only your skill and dexterity that fascinates me, it is your cheery confidence in yourself, your inexplicable hopefulness, that does me good."
Thus encouraged, he set to work to refix the gear – case. He stood the bicycle against the house, and worked from the off side. Then he stood it against a tree, and worked from the near side. Then I held it for him, while he lay on the ground with his head between the wheels, and worked at it from below, and dropped