"Allen, Grant - Miss Cayley's Adventures 03 - The Adenture of the Inquisitive American" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Grant)

hand, as if it were a pet child. Then he mounted nimbly.
Pride shone in his eye. I saw in a second he was a fond
inventor.

He rode a few yards on. Next he turned to me eagerly.
'This ma-chine,' he said, in an impressive voice, 'is
pro-pelled by an eccentric.' Like all his countrymen, he
laid most stress on unaccented syllables.

'Oh, I knew you were an eccentric,' I said, 'the moment I
set eyes upon you.'

He surveyed me gravely. 'You misunderstand me, miss,' he
corrected. 'When I say an eccentric, I mean, a crank.'

'They are much the same thing,' I answered, briskly.
'Though I confess I would hardly have applied so rude a word
as crank to you.'

He looked me over suspiciously, as if I were trying to
make game of him, but my face was sphinx-like. So he
brought the machine a yard or two nearer, and explained its
construction to me. He was quite right: it was driven by a
crank. It had no chain, but was moved by a pedal, working
narrowly up and down, and attached to a rigid bar, which
impelled the wheels by means of an eccentric.

Besides this, it had a curious device for altering the
gearing automatically while one rode, so as to enable one to
adapt it to the varying slope in mounting hills. This part
of the mechanism he explained to me elaborately. There was
a gauge in front which allowed one to sight the steepness of
the slope by mere inspection; and according as the gauge
marked one, two, three, or four, as its gradient on the
scale, the rider pressed a button on the handle-bar with his
left hand once, twice, thrice, or four times, so that the
gearing adapted itself without an effort to the rise in the
surface. Besides, there were devices for rigidity and
compensation. Altogether, it was a most apt and ingenious
piece of mechanism. I did not wonder he was proud of it.

'Get up and ride, miss,' he said in a persuasive voice.

I did as I was bid. To my immense surprise, I ran up the
steep hill as smoothly and easily as if it were a perfectly-
laid level.

'Goes nicely, doesn't she?' Mr. Hitchcock murmured
rubbing his hands.