'Do you remember--two women?'
He looked at her sharply.
'I do,' he answered.
'So you're the two women!' Hewet exclaimed, looking from Helen to Rachel.
'Your lights tempted us,' said Helen. 'We watched you playing cards, but we never knew that we were being watched.'
'It was like a thing in a play,' Rachel added.
'And Hirst couldn't describe you,' said Hewet.
It was certainly odd to have seen Helen and to find nothing to say about her. Hughling Elliot put up his eyeglass and grasped the situation.
'I don't know of anything more dreadful,' he said, pulling at the joint of a chicken's leg,
'than being seen when one isn't conscious of it. One feels sure one has been caught doing something ridiculous-- looking at one's tongue in a hansom, for instance.' Now the others ceased to look at the view, and drawing together sat down in a circle round the baskets.
'And yet those little looking-glasses in hansoms have a fascination of their own,' said Mrs. Thornbury. 'One's features look so different when one can only see a bit of them.'
'There will soon be very few hansom cabs left,' said Mrs. Elliot. 'And four-wheeled cabs--I assure you even at Oxford it's almost impossible to get a four-wheeled cab.'
'I wonder what happens to the horses,' said Susan.
'Veal pie,' said Arthur.
'It's high time that horses should become extinct anyhow,' said Hirst. 'They're distressingly ugly, besides being vicious.'
But Susan, who had been brought up to understand that the horse is the noblest of God's creatures, could not agree, and Venning thought Hirst an unspeakable ass, but was too polite not to continue the conversation.
'When they see us falling out of aeroplanes they get some of their own back, I expect,' he remarked.
'You fly?' said old Mr. Thornbury, putting on his spectacles to look at him.
'I hope to, some day,' said Arthur.
Here flying was discussed at length, and Mrs. Thornbury delivered an opinion which was almost a speech to the effect that it would be quite necessary in time of war, and in England we were terribly behind-hand. 'If I were a young fellow,' she concluded, 'I should certainly qualify.' It was odd to look at the little elderly lady, in her grey coat and skirt, with a sandwich in her hand, her eyes lighting up with zeal as she imagined herself a young man in an aeroplane. For some reason, however, the talk did not run easily after this, and all they said was about drink and salt and the view. Suddenly Miss Allan, who was seated with her back to the ruined wall, put down her sandwich, picked something off her neck, and remarked, 'I'm covered with little creatures.' It was true, and the discovery was very welcome. The ants were pouring down a glacier of loose earth heaped between the stones of the ruin--large brown ants with polished bodies. She held out one on the back of her hand for Helen to look at.
'Suppose they sting?' said Helen.
'They will not sting, but they may infest the victuals,' said Miss Allan, and measures were taken at once to divert the ants from their course. At Hewet's suggestion it was decided to adopt the methods of modern warfare against an invading army. The tablecloth represented the invaded country, and round it they built barricades of baskets, set up the wine bottles in a rampart, made fortifications of bread and dug fosses of salt. When an ant got through it was exposed to a fire of bread-crumbs, until Susan pronounced that that was cruel, and rewarded those brave spirits with spoil in the shape of tongue. Playing this game they lost their stiffness, and even became unusually daring, for Mr. Perrott, who was very shy, said, 'Permit me,' and removed an ant from Evelyn's neck.
'It would be no laughing matter really,' said Mrs. Elliot confidentially to Mrs. Thornbury, 'if an ant did get between the vest and the skin.' The noise grew suddenly more clamorous, for it was discovered that a long line of ants had found their way on to the table-cloth by a back entrance, and if success could be gauged by noise, Hewet had every reason to think his party a success. Nevertheless he became, for no reason at all, profoundly depressed.
'They are not satisfactory; they are ignoble,' he thought, surveying his guests from a little distance, where he was gathering together the plates. He glanced at them all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating round the table-cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways, lovable even in their contentment and desire to be kind, how mediocre they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another! There was Mrs. Thornbury, sweet but
