“This is Ready’s work!” he panted, as he wheeled down the road. “I’ll have to murder that fellow! I see there is no help for it! I shall have to take him between my two thumbs and squash his life out as I would any common bug!”
He tried to smile when the village was behind him.
“It’s a good joke, anyway, and it’s on your Uncle Richard! Of course, the whole college knows of it now, and New Haven will know it before night. Heavens! If it should get into the newspapers!”
Dick wheeled on so fast, hardly knowing now that he was speeding, that he found himself approaching the next little village almost before he thought it possible. He saw the inevitable crowd gathered on the principal corner of the street, through which he must pass unless he elected to make a wide détour and avoid the village altogether. Some boys raised a cheer as he drew near, swinging their hats with an urchin’s delight.
“I’ll not stop!” Dick grunted, shrinking from the thought of again encountering some one who would ask him about his world-wide travels. “They’ll want to know if I’ve been in China, likely, and if I’ve fought the Boxers, and how many I’ve killed!”
So he put on extra speed, lowered his visored cap, bent over the handle-bars, and went through the street like a streak of lightning. The boys yelled and whooped, and he could not help hearing one citizen remark that “Jimmy Michael ain’t in it with that feller!”
“Here comes the bikeist!” a boy was shouting to another group at the lower corner. “Come quick, Sammy, ’er ye’ll be too late!”
“Geewhiskers! ain’t he a snorter?” another boy yelled.
The group broke into a wild cheer as Dick swept past, pedaling as if he were racing for life. When he had escaped from these innocent tormentors, he began to think over the situation and to ask himself if he should go on to Guilford or stop where he was and retrace his way to New Haven by another route. To do that would be to lose his bet. Not that he cared so much for the money or for the mere winning, but that would give Ready and the sophomores a perhaps coveted opportunity to guy him for cowardice.
No, he was in it, and there seemed to be no way out but to make the ride according to plans and schedule and win out, so far as that part was concerned. So he rode on, wondering if there were no means by which he could yet defeat the sophomores.