A Birthday Red-letter days are common in A's life, by
all accounts. He cele- brates at the slightest provocation, although he manages to remain • respectable in never being so bad that he has to be taken in charge. He goes to market whenever there is a market, and he has a score of private anniversaries that bring him down from his holding at odd times in the week. When I met him it was his birthday. He was wheeling his bicycle on a zig-zag course, and I could not be sure whether he kept the machine upright or the machine propped him up. "Something wrong with my bike," he said, and stopped to examine the wheels and chain. There was nothing wrong that I could see. The chain was on; the tyres were hard. A. lifted the back wheel and put his foot heavily on the pedal, but pressed in the wrong direction and made the free-wheel turn. "There !" he said. "See what I mean ? " The effort almost cost him his balance. He grabbed at the bicycle, steadied himself and said. "Fifty-seven today. You wouldn't think so, would you ? " A premonition of hazards he would encounter on the way home made him break off and hurry the bicycle along for a hundred yards. I looked back and saw him in difficulties once more, and had a feeling that his fifty-seventh birthday would be a blank day in his memory.
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