They found the ladies rather, it seemed, by accident than design, waiting upon a sandy common rich with purple heather and bordered by woods of fir and spruce. They had been waiting some time, and it was clear that the sight of the yellow caravan relieved an accumulated anxiety. Bealby rejoiced to see them. His soul glowed with the pride of chocolate resisted and William overcome. He resolved to distinguish himself over the preparation of the midday meal. It was a pleasant little island of green they chose for their midday pitch, a little patch of emerald turf amidst the purple, a patch already doomed to removal, as a bare oblong and a pile of rolled-up turfs witnessed. This pile and a little bank of heather and bramble promised shelter from the breeze, and down the hill a hundred yards away was a spring and a built-up pool. This spot lay perhaps fifty yards away from the high road and one reached it along a rutty track which had been made by the turf cutters. And overhead was the glorious sky of an English summer, with great clouds like sunlit, white-sailed ships, the Constable sky. The white horse was hobbled and turned out to pasture among the heather, and William was sent off to get congenial provender at the nearest public house. “William!” shouted Mrs. Bowles as he departed, shouting confidentially into his ear, “Get your clothes mended.” “Eh?” said William. “Mend your clothes.” “Yah! ’E did that,” said William viciously with a movement of self-protection, and so went. Nobody watched him go. Almost sternly they set to work upon the luncheon preparation as William receded. “William,” Mrs. Bowles remarked, as she bustled with the patent cooker, putting it up wrong way round so that afterwards it collapsed, “William—takes offence. Sometimes I think he takes offence almost too often.... Did you have any difficulty with him, Dick?” “It wasn’t anything, miss,” said Bealby meekly. Bealby was wonderful with the firelighting, and except that he cracked a plate in warming it, quite admirable as a cook. He burnt his fingers twice—and liked doing it; he ate his portion with instinctive modesty on the other side of the caravan and he washed up—as Mr. Mergleson had always instructed him to do. Mrs. Bowles showed him how to clean knives and forks by sticking them into the turf. A little to his surprise these ladies lit and smoked cigarettes. They sat about and talked perplexingly. Clever stuff. Then he had to get water from the neighbouring brook and boil the kettle for an early tea. Madeleine produced a charmingly bound little book and read in it, the other two professed themselves anxious for the view from a neighbouring hill. They produced their sensible spiked walking sticks such as one does not see in England; they seemed full of energy. “You go,” Madeleine had said, “while I and Dick stay here and make tea. I’ve walked enough to-day....”