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Robert's only sister, a girl of sixteen
    named Dora. Robert had prevailed upon Dora to loan it to Beatrice as a betrothal favor,
    while Dora was visiting cousins in Springfield, Illinois. Margaret and Elizabeth were to
    have the bicycle until Robert returned it when he went for a last visit before the wedding.
    Beatrice did not care about the bicycle, but described in detail the costume Dora had,
    solely devoted to bicycle riding, made of blue serge, with gussets behind the shoulders
    for leaning forward over the handlebars, and wide, skirtlike pantaloons. The girl also had
    special lace-up boots. Margaret and Elizabeth had none of these things, but they could tie
    up their skirts well enough to try riding, which they did.

    The best place to ride this bicycle was in an area the mules had pounded flat,
    around the biggest barn, and between the barn and the tobacco shed. It was grassless and
    hard, and the three of them took turns riding a figure-eight circuit one way round the barn
    and then the other way round the tobacco shed. It was an unusual sensation, not like
    anything Margaret had ever felt before. She took to it. She put on her oldest skirt, without
    a petticoat, and then wrapped some strips of flannel around her legs like horse bandages,
    leaving room for her knees to bend. Of course the spokes of the wheel could catch her
    skirts and either rip them or topple her over, or both, but she got used to taking care, and
    once she had figured out what to do, she went faster and faster, even as the weather got
    colder and flakes of snow began to swirl in the wind.

    To be balanced so precariously, and to feel that balance become steadier, even
    around the curves of their track, as she pedaled harder and went faster, was exhilarating.
    Beatrice said that Dora was a hardy and determined bicyclist--that she belonged to a club
    of thirty members, both male and female, and they cycled all over St. Louis, which had
    many good roads. She could pedal up a long, steep hill and fly down the other side (this
    idea appealed to Margaret from the beginning). Once, Beatrice said, Dora had bicycled
    some twenty miles in one day, around the periphery of Forest Park, all by herself. No one
    had said a thing against it, because all the young people in St. Louis who didn't have
    bicycles were planning to get them, and, it seemed, a young lady bicycling alone was
    somewhat scandalous, but not wildly so.

    This bicycle even impressed Lavinia and John Gentry, who did not try riding but
    enjoyed watching, as did all of the farm laborers and workmen. Bicycles were expensive.
    Beatrice told them that Dora had confided to her that the bicycle had cost almost a
    hundred dollars. When Beatrice quoted this sum, Elizabeth and Margaret were not
    horrified--they were impressed. Three boring months of wedding plans, and here, all of a
    sudden, was the casual wealth of the family Beatrice was marrying into palpably
    demonstrated. John Gentry was impressed, too--all of Gentry Farm, he said, though
    without the men and mules, was worth only 120 bicycles. Margaret rode the bicycle even
    as it got colder and colder, and every night she wiped it off and put it away in the barn.

    As sometimes happened in Missouri, one of those days dawned bright, a fugitive
    remnant of Indian summer before the closing in of snow and gloom. On that day,
    Margaret was up the moment she saw the sunlight beneath the shade. It was not a
    Sunday. She could slip out of the house without getting breakfast, but also without
    arousing much of a fuss, and she did.

    She went straight to the bicycle. The door of the barn was already open, and she
    walked the vehicle into the sunlight. Her plan was to ride it to town, some two miles off,
    and then, perhaps, beyond. The puzzle was which route to take. There were three
    possibilities. When they walked to town, they always cut across the upper pastures,
    petting the horses and mules and climbing the fences, thereby reducing the distance