He said. "I wish you wouldn’t harp so much on my age. A man at thirty– four—"
"A man at what?"
He said: "If you don’t want the thing, don’t have it. If your machine runs away with you down a mountain, and you and George get flung through a church roof, don’t blame me."
"I cannot promise for George," I said; "a little thing will sometimes irritate him, as you know. If such an accident as you suggest happen, he may be cross, but I will undertake to explain to him that it was not your fault."
"Is the thing all right?" he asked.
"The tandem," I replied, "is well."
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.