The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll (1913)

If you (presuming you are of the sex that does such things)-if you had gone into the Drapery Emporium-which is really only magnificent for shop-of Messrs. Antrobus & Co.-a perfectly fictitious Co. by the bye-of Putney on the 14th of August 1895 had turned to the right-hand side where the blocks of white linen and piles of blankets rise up to the rail from which the pink and blue prints depend you might have been served by the central figure of this story that is now beginning. (Excerpt)