I was sitting on a rock thinking of nothing at all when Elliot started up like a fairy in a pantomime."
"Our chicken got into the salt," Hewet said dolefully to Susan. "Nor is it true that bananas include moisture as well as sustenance."
Hirst was already drinking.
"We've been cursing you," said Ridley in answer to Mrs. Elliot's kind enquiries about his wife. "You tourists eat up all the eggs, Helen tells me. That's an eyesore too"—he nodded his head at the hotel. "Disgusting luxury, I call it We live with pigs in the drawing-room."
"The food is not at all what it ought to be, considering the price," said Mrs. Paley seriously. "But unless one goes to a hotel where is one to go to?"
"Stay at home," said Ridley. "I often wish I had! Every one ought to stay at home. But, of course, they won't."
Mrs. Paley conceived a certain grudge against Ridley, who seemed to be criticising her habits after an acquaintance of five minutes.
"I believe in foreign travel myself," she stated, "if one knows one's native land, which I think I can honestly say I do. I should not allow any one to travel until they had visited Kent and Dorsetshire—Kent for the hops, and Dorsetshire for its old stone cottages. There is nothing to compare with them here."
"Yes—I always think that some people like the flat and other people like the downs," said Mrs. Elliot rather vaguely.
Hirst, who had been eating and drinking without interruption, now lit a cigarette, and observed, "Oh, but we're all agreed by this time that nature's a mistake. She's either very ugly, appallingly uncomfortable, or absolutely terrifying. I don't know which alarms me most—a cow or a tree. I once met a cow in a field by night. The creature looked at me. I assure you it turned my hair grey. It's a disgrace that the animals should be allowed to go at large."
"And what did the cow think of him?' Venning mumbled to Susan, who immediately decided in her own mind that Mr. Hirst was a dreadful young man, and that although he had
