Pomona's Travels eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 217 pages of information about Pomona's Travels.

Pomona's Travels eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 217 pages of information about Pomona's Travels.

I had hardly started down this hill when my tricycle became frisky and showed signs of wanting to run, and I got a little nervous, for I didn’t fancy going fast down a slope like that.  I put on the brake, but I don’t believe I managed it right, for I seemed to go faster and faster; and then, as the machine didn’t need any working, I took my feet off the pedals, with an idea, I think, though I can’t now remember, that I would get off and walk down the hill.  In an instant that thing took the bit in its teeth and away it went wildly tearing down hill.  I never was so much frightened in all my life.  I tried to get my feet back on the pedals, but I couldn’t do it, and all I could do was to keep that flying tricycle in the middle of the road.  As far as I could see ahead there was not anything in the way of a wagon or a carriage that I could run into, but there was such a stretch of slope that it made me fairly dizzy.  Just as I was having a little bit of comfort from thinking there was nothing in the way, a black woolly dog jumped out into the road some distance ahead of me and stood there barking.  My heart fell, like a bucket into a well with the rope broken.  If I steered the least bit to the right or the left I believe I would have bounded over the hedge like a glass bottle from a railroad train, and come down on the other side in shivers and splinters.  If I didn’t turn I was making a bee-line for the dog; but I had no time to think what to do, and in an instant that black woolly dog faded away like a reminiscence among the buzzing wheels of my tricycle.  I felt a little bump, but was ignorant of further particulars.

I was now going at what seemed like a speed of ninety or a hundred miles an hour, with the wind rushing in between my teeth like water over a mill-dam, and I felt sure that if I kept on going down that hill I should soon be whirling through space like a comet.  The only way I could think of to save myself was to turn into some level place where the thing would stop, but not a crossroad did I pass; but presently I saw a little house standing back from the road, which seemed to hump itself a little at that place so as to be nearly level, and over the edge of the hump it dipped so suddenly that I could not see the rest of the road at all.

“Now,” thought I to myself, “if the gate of that house is open I’ll turn into it, and no matter what I run into, it would be better than going over the edge of that rise beyond and down the awful hill that must be on the other side of it.”  As I swooped down to the little house and reached the level ground I felt I was going a little slower, but not much.  However, I steered my tricycle round at just the right instant, and through the front gate I went like a flash.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Pomona's Travels from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.