The day had changed for her. The fitful kindly wind was no longer kindly. It tugged at her hat and made her bones ache cruelly. The white clouds blowing across the sky seemed harbingers of rain, threatening to overcast the sun. She felt frail and impotent, and when she said, "I should like to turn back now," there was a quaver in her voice that she tried in vain to conceal. As they retraced their slow steps Miss Dorset recited in detail her preparations for Mrs. Hugh's arrival. "I've put two big vases of leaves in her bedroom," she said. "There really aren't any flowers left worth picking and the leaves are a beautiful colour." "Sarah's garden at Lynton will be full of flowers. They bloom for her all the year round, but I'm no gardener." Mrs. Greene was regaining her serenity. "What are we giving her for dinner?" she asked. "Sarah pays no attention to what she eats, but I'd like to give her such a good dinner that she'll be bound to notice it." "Well, I had thought of a good clear soup, some stuffed fillets of sole, a pheasant, and a nice apricot cream," said Miss Dorset tentatively, "but that can easily be changed if you would like something more elaborate." "I don't like elaborate things," answered Mrs. Greene, "but Sarah never thinks of anything so mundane as food and it's good for her to meet a materialist like me." She reflected for a moment and then pronounced decisively. "Yes, that's a good dinner. But not apricot cream. Tell cook to make a peach tart with our own bottled peaches, and to give us a good hot savoury after it, and tell her to put enough sherry in the soup. I don't know why, but when there's no man to cook for, they won't put sherry in the soup or rum in the trifles." Mrs. Greene spoke energetically. Careless herself as to what she ate, she had always held it important not only that her glass and silver should be beyond reproach, but that the food served to guests should be delicately chosen and delicately cooked. "There's a lot to be learnt from food," she continued in a ruminating vein. "Take Sarah, for instance. After a dinner at Lynton you can't help knowing she's a good gardener because of her fruit and vegetables, but you can't help seeing she isn't discriminating; she gives you nourishment without quality. And think of Edith. Every meal I've eaten in that house has stamped her afresh as a practical, unimaginative, uninteresting woman." "I hadn't really thought of it, but I'm sure there's a lot in what you say," agreed Miss Dorset. "Here we are back again. Shall we go in now or would you like another little turn?" "I would not," Mrs. Greene replied crisply. "I'll go in and warm myself till lunch time; this wind chills my bones." The warm atmosphere of the house after the tang of the fresh November air brought a gentle consciousness of fatigue that did not dissipate during lunch time, and Mrs. Greene was not reluctant to go upstairs for her afternoon rest.