Page:The wheels of chance -- a bicycling idyll.djvu/223

Rh cerely to say a clever thing. Both Dangle and Widgery thought Phipps a bit of a cub, and Phipps thought both Dangle and Widgery a couple of Thundering Bounders.

"They would have got to Chichester in time for lunch," said Dangle, in the train. "After, perhaps. And there's no sufficient place in the road. So soon as we get there, Phipps must inquire at the chief hotels to see if any one answering to her description has lunched there."

"Oh, I'll inquire," said Phipps. "Willingly. I suppose you and Widgery will just hang about—"

He saw an expression of pain on Mrs. Milton's gentle face, and stopped abruptly.

"No," said Dangle, "we shan't hang about, as you put it. There are two places in Chichester where tourists might go—the cathedral and a remarkably fine museum. I shall go to the cathedral and make an inquiry or so, while Widgery—" "The museum. Very well. And after that there's a little thing or two I've thought of myself," said Widgery.

To begin with they took Mrs. Milton in a kind of procession to the Red Hotel and established her there with some tea. "You are so kind to me," she said. "All of you." They signified that it was nothing, and dispersed to their inquiries. By six