It was on the very next Saturday that Kitty, craving for the country, and finding for once she had no particularly pressing engagement in town, suggested a cycling excursion. She wanted her sister to go with her, but Kingfield held superior attractions for Joan, who suggested Lesbia as a substitute and promised to lend her her bicycle. It was all arranged at the breakfast-table, and the two girls then and there cut sandwiches, fetched the machines, oiled them, pumped tyres, strapped on cycle-baskets, and started forth before ten o'clock. They rode first through the suburbs, where foliage was yet unspoilt with dust from motors, and the gardens were making a brave show of lilac, laburnum, and pink hawthorn. Then by degrees the houses grew fewer, the kerbstones disappeared, and the footpaths gave way to grassy borders; there were unclipped hedges instead of ornamental railings, and fields, and woods, and streams on the other side of them. Bird-life was at its zenith; larks, so high as to be almost invisible, poured out torrents of rapture; every apple tree seemed to have a blackbird soloist on a topmost bough; wrens, linnets, and hedge-warblers fluttered and twittered among low bushes, and flocks of jackdaws and rooks rose from the fields in whirling flights. With one accord the girls rode fast. There was an exaltation in free-wheeling down the hills, flying through the air like birds. It almost gave them the sensation of wings. The spell of spring was upon them, that curious thrill that comes to us as we escape out of the circles of civilization and visit Mother Nature at her busiest season, when every inch of her domain is a-throb with life. It was pretty country in the neighbourhood of Kingfield, an undulating landscape with large trees and lush meadows, and a slow river with banks of reeds and iris. The villages had timbered cottages with thatched roofs and flowery gardens, old grey church towers showed among groups of leafy elms, and picturesque farm buildings and straw-stacks stood back from the road at the ends of by-lanes. Kitty and Lesbia ate their sandwiches very early, sitting in a wood blue with hyacinths, more than doubtful indeed that they were trespassing, but hoping no indignant farmer would spy them and turn them out. They rested here for half an hour, dozing in a patch of sunshine and blissfully happy, till a colony of ants discovered them and began to employ forcible measures of ejectment. "Wow! The ants are stinging my ankles," wailed Kitty. "Ants and ankles or aunts and uncles did you say?" twittered Lesbia, trying to slay a mosquito, which was making a ferocious onslaught at her hatless forehead. "This place is rather too much alive for my taste. I vote we get a move on." "Right-o! I'm ready if you are. I never saw such a bloodthirsty crew of insects. I wonder what they live on when there are no human beings to bite?"