The Coningtons were much younger men, the elder a young barrister. They also talked to George about books and pictures, in which their taste was more modern if less sure than Pollak’s urbane Second Empire culture. But with them George learned companionship, the fun of infinite, everlasting arguments about “life” and ideas, the fun of making _mots_ and laughing freely. The Coningtons were both great walkers. George, of course, had the middle class idea that five miles was the limit of human capacity for walking. Like Pollak, the Coningtons treated him as if he were a man, assumed also that he could do what they were showing him how to do. So when Donald Conington came down for a week-end, he assumed that George would want to walk. That day’s walk had such an effect upon George that he could even remember the date, 2nd of June. It was one of those soft cloudless days that do sometimes happen in England, even in June. They set out from Hamborough soon after breakfast and struck inland, going at a steady, even pace, talking and laughing. Donald was in excellent form, cheery and amusing, happy to be out of harness for a few hours. Four miles brought them beyond the limits of George’s own wanderings, and after a couple of hours’ tramp they suddenly came out on the crest of the last chalk ridge and looked over a wide fertile plain of woodland and tilth and hop-fields, all shimmering in the warm sunlight. The curious hooked noses of oast-houses sniffed over the tops of soft round elm-clumps. They could see three church spires and a dozen hamlets. The only sound came from the larks high overhead. “God!” exclaimed Donald in his slightly theatrical way, “what a fair prospect!” A fair prospect indeed, and an unforgettable moment when one comes for the first time to the crest of a hill and looks over an unknown country shimmering in the sun, with the white coiling English lanes inviting exploration. Donald set off down the hill, singing lustily: “O, Mistress mine, where art thou roaming?” George followed a little hesitatingly. His legs were already rather tired, it was long past eleven—how would they get back in time for lunch, and what would be said if they were late? He mentioned his fears timidly to Donald. “What! Tired? Why, good God, man, we’ve only just started! We’ll push on another four miles to Crockton, and have lunch in a pub. I told them we shouldn’t be in until after tea.”