AROUND EPSOM AND LEATHERHEAD 161 



myself that could worry along, as some owners 

 used to make their tikes come on long journeys 

 after a bicycle. In general, dogs and cycles do 

 not go together. The faithful animal never has 

 quite taken to cycles — I do not mean as a rider 

 — except to his master's, and a lot of him were 

 and are pests seeking, of malice prepense, to 

 cause an accident. Unhappily, too, their tendency 

 to interfere with a wheeler's indisputable right to 

 the road was frequently fostered by proprietors. 

 Not so much was I thinking of this sort as of 

 an artful section who, confident in their judgment 

 of pace and so forth, would deliberately lay them- 

 selves out — dogs, not their masters — to spoof the 

 wheel-rider and involve him in entanglements. 

 Canines I have known who could play out of 

 their heads all the tricks the nervous old lady 

 will involuntarily illustrate, offering and retreat- 

 ing, stopping when she shouldn't and going on 

 when she didn't ought, in making passage from 

 one kerbstone of a busy road to that opposite. 

 One gentleman in particular I recollect who 

 regarded every cyclist's bell as a warning 

 requiring him to cross the ringer's course, get 

 himself as nearly as possible but not quite run 

 over, and give the unhappy wheelman every 

 chance of coming to grief. Not once but hundreds 

 of times in a year would he play this trick ; and 

 the worst of it was you dare not say a word 

 to him, because if he did answer your signals 

 from the bank — I should say road-edge — he would 

 make an outward tack before coming back on 

 another board, so by interference you only turned 

 bad into worse. The sensible course was to 

 pretend that you did not know anything about 

 him, he was no dog of yours, more especially 



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