Page:Malay Sketches.pdf/185

 man of his age and figure riding a tricycle was enough to make a dog bark (and here His Highness laughed consumedly at the spectacle he had conjured up). Had anyone ever seen him ride a tricycle? Where was he going to ride it? Was it on the sandy shore of the river where he lived? and if not there, then where? He understood that tricycles would neither go through the jungle nor across padi fields, and, if he were to take "the creature" out shooting, he supposed it would not greatly help him to get a shot at a bison or a rhinoceros. Did anyone imagine he was going to carry letters? that he was going to join the Post Office? If the imputation were not so stupid he could almost be angry with the priest, a man whom he had heard over and over again say that the one thing he desired was a tricycle, something on which he could take exercise, and at the same time get about his district. Ele had even asked him, the King, to lend him money to buy the machine, but he had no money to lend and tried to dissuade the man because he thought that in his inexperience he might fall and hurt himself. Malays did not understand things that ran on three wheels without ever a horse or a bullock, or even a buffalo to pull them. He saw the tricycle lying under his house, and he