Among them rode a young and beautiful girl on a machine that was new.

She was evidently a novice on the bicycle.
One felt instinctively that there would come a moment when she would require help, and Harris, with his accustomed chivalry, suggested we should keep near her.

Harris, as he occasionally explains to George and to myself, has daughters of his own, or, to speak more correctly, a daughter, who as the years progress will no doubt cease practising catherine wheels in the front garden, and will grow up into a beautiful and respectable young lady.

This naturally gives Harris an interest in all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five or thereabouts; they remind him, so he says, of home.
We had ridden for about two miles, when we noticed, a little ahead of us in a space where five ways met, a man with a hose, watering the roads.
The pipe, supported at each joint by a pair of tiny wheels, writhed after him as he moved, suggesting a gigantic-worm, from whose open neck, as the man, gripping it firmly in both hands, pointing it now this way, and now that, now elevating it, now depressing it, poured a strong stream of water at the rate of about a gallon a second.
"What a much better method than ours," observed Harris, enthusiastically.
Harris is inclined to be chronically severe on all British institutions.
"How much simpler, quicker, and more economical! You see, one man by this method can in five minutes water a stretch of road that would take us with our clumsy lumbering cart half an hour to cover." George, who was riding behind me on the tandem, said, "Yes, and it is also a method by which with a little carelessness a man could cover a good many people in a good deal less time than they could get out of the way." George, the opposite to Harris, is British to the core.

I remember George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for suggesting the introduction of the guillotine into England.
"It is so much neater," said Harris.
"I don't care if it is," said George; "I'm an Englishman; hanging is good enough for me." "Our water-cart may have its disadvantages," continued George, "but it can only make you uncomfortable about the legs, and you can avoid it.
This is the sort of machine with which a man can follow you round the corner and upstairs." "It fascinates me to watch them," said Harris.