Menzies-Legh, indeed, was strangely irritable. Perhaps his foot hurt him, but he ought not to have minded that, considering, as I told him, it was nobody’s fault but his own. I was leading the horse at the moment, and saw Menzies-Legh’s foot but never dreamed he would not remove it in time, and you cannot, as I said to him, blame a dumb animal. “Certainly not,” agreed Menzies-Legh; but with a singular gloom. And when I saw the exorbitance of the bill I felt bound to point out to him that strict honesty did not seem to be characteristic of his countrymen, and to enlarge on the difference between them and my own, and that seemed to irritate him too, though he said nothing. Seeing this suppressed irritation I sought to remove it by reminding him of his wealth, and of how the rapacity of the various farmers would at the worst only mean for him one stove the less for one undeserving old woman the fewer; but even that did not cheer him--he was and remained in a bad temper. So that, vexed as I was myself at the expense of the holiday that was to have been so cheap, I could not prevent a temporary good-humour taking possession of me, which is the invariable effect produced on me by other people’s crossness. Even then, with his hurt foot, Menzies-Legh was such a slave to duty that while I was in the very act of talking the recollection of something he ought to do made him struggle up from the low chair and rugs in which his wife had carefully placed him, and limp away; and I saw no more of him for a long while beyond an occasional glimpse of his sallow visage at the window in front of his van, where he sat all day in silence driving his horse. Behold us, then, crawling along an ugly highroad with our mouths full of dust. The weather was alternately hot and cold, but uninterruptedly windy, and rain threatened to descend on us and actually did as the afternoon wore on. My hearers must remember that in caravaning afternoons wear on and mornings merge into them with no such thing as a real meal throughout their entire length. Long before this I had realized that plums were to be my portion: plums, or bananas, or very green apples, mitigated by a biscuit unless biscuits chanced to be scarce (in which case the ladies got them), at a time of day when the rest of Europe was sitting down comfortably to its luncheon; and I had learned to acquiesce in this as I acquiesced in all the other privations, for I saw for myself that it was impossible to arrange a cooked meal except before leaving or after arriving in camp. A reasonable man is silent before the impossible; still, plums are poor things to march on. March on them, however, I had to, and Hunger (a most unpleasant and reverberating companion) came too, and marched with me every day.