on the leaves and grass. . . . He wheeled his machine up Putney Hill, and his heart sang within him. Hoopdriver encounters a pretty young woman cycling alone and wearing rationals (bloomers). He dares not speak to the Young Lady in Grey, as he calls her, but their paths keep crossing. She is ultimately revealed to be Jessie Milton, a girl of seventeen who has run away from her stepmother in Surbiton, risking "ruin" at the hands of the bounder Bechamel, an unscrupulous older man who has promised to help the naive Jessie to establish herself an independent life but who is really intent on seducing her. Ironically, her flight has in part been inspired by liberal ideals of unconventionality that have been hypocritically promoted by her stepmother's popular novels. Hoopdriver half-inadvertently rescues her from Bechamel's clutches, and the two proceed to cycle across the south of England. Ashamed of his true circumstances, Hoopdriver spins droll tales of South African origins and the comforts of wealth until shame induces him to confess his true circumstances. But he also displays genuine courage, rebuking insolent travellers who insult Jessie's honour. Hoopdriver's encounter inspires in him a desire to better himself, as well as impossibly romantic feelings toward Jessie. At last a party consisting of her stepmother, some of her stepmother's admirers, and her former schoolteacher catches up with them. Jessie returns home and Hoopdriver returns to the Drapery Emporium of Messrs. Antrobus & Co., but Jessie has promised to "send him some books" and has held out the vague prospect that "in six years' time" things may be different. Jessie's bookish and romantic education has kept her ignorant of the realities of life, and her ignorance contributes to the comedy of Hoopdriver's half-clever, half-ridiculous improvised stories of life in Africa. Jessie has her own aspirations: "She was going to Live her Own Life, with emphasis." Wells's intention in The Wheels of Chance might be taken to be satirical, were his protagonists' circumstances not so closely related to his own history and that of his second wife, Catherine Robbins. Setting Wells used real places in plotting the novel, and the entire route can be followed on a map. Among the sites described in the novel are Ripley, Cobham, Guildford, Haslemere, Godalming, Milford, Midhurst, Chichester, Bognor (where, at the Vicuna Hotel, Hoopdriver comes to Jessie's rescue), Chichester Harbour, Havant, Botley, the hamlet of