“I don’t like the look of that salmon. I feel sure it’s been frozen. Is that the best you have? It looks to me like New Zealand or Canterbury salmon! Really, _everything_ seems to be made in Germany nowadays, doesn’t it? And no mayonnaise. . . ? It’s in the cruet? I never care for that bottled stuff. . . . Oh, yes, leave it; but I wish now that we had had oysters. . . . It’s no use offering to change it; we’ve done nothing else so far but have wrong things brought us to have changed—or at least it would have been changed if I hadn’t consented to put up with the white bread. But you can bring us some lime-juice. Now don’t forget _this_ time and bring ginger-beer. . . . Yes, lime-juice for two. . . . But I thought you agreed to lime-juice just now? . . . Oh, have what you like by all means; _I_ don’t mind what it is; I only advised lime-juice because coffee is so _very_ bad for anyone on diet, and you can’t be too careful; still, please yourself, only _do_ let us decide on _something_, or she’ll be off again. . . . That’s it, one coffee and one lime-juice. . . . Yes, with plenty of milk. . . . Now, I wonder if that scatter-brained girl will go and put the milk in the lime-juice? “You were surprised to hear I was back in town? I returned last week. I absolutely couldn’t have _existed_ on that benighted hill-top another hour. . . . I knew the moment I set eyes on it that it wasn’t sufficiently cooked. No one could be expected to eat it. She must get us something else. Waitress! This salmon isn’t _half_-done. It’s as soft as. . . . Oh, I see; yours is hard? Well, at any rate, it isn’t what it ought to be. Mine is quite spongy, and this lady’s is as hard as . . . the skin, is it? . . . this lady’s skin is just like leather. . . . I suppose it had better be oysters. . . . Now I wonder how much longer she’ll keep us waiting? But as I was saying, they were the dullest, most bucolic set of people I ever came across; not a thought above their fowls and cabbages. I tried to discuss Art and Literature with them—simple things, not too far above their heads, you know, just to draw them out; but they merely gazed at me in utter blankness. . . . Yes, she has a cottage there; I’d forgotten I mentioned it in my letter. . . . Oh, yes, I met her; in fact she persuaded me to address a drawing-room meeting at her house; she got it up on purpose, hearing I was in the district. I could ill afford to spare the time from my book; but she wrote and made _such_ a point of it, that I could hardly refuse without seeming rude. She invited a number of the local people to meet me; but a more stupid, unimpressionable collection of—— . . . what is she like? _Most_ ordinary. As you know, I’m endowed with unusual intuition, and can gauge people and sum them up in a _moment_, and I must say I found her a _very_ uninteresting person—not to say exceedingly heavy.” * * * * *