A good many men had come, one at least to every five ladies, but as the time passed and a certain blankness began to gather over the spirits of all, they fell into different attitudes of the despair which the ladies did their best to pass off for rapture. At each unscheduled noise they started in a vain expectation, and when the end came, it came so without accent, so without anything but the clock to mark it as the close, that they could hardly get themselves together for going away. They did what was nice and right, of course, in thanking Lindora for her fascinating afternoon, but when they were well beyond hearing one said to another: "Well, I shall certainly have an appetite for my dinner _to-night_! Why, if there had only been a cup of the weakest kind of tea, or even of cold water!" Then those who had come in autos gathered as many pedestrians into them as they would hold in leaving the house, or caught them up fainting by the way. Lindora and Florindo watched them from their veranda. "Well, my dear," he said, "it's been a wonderful afternoon; an immense stride forward in the cause of anti-eating--or--" "Don't _speak_ to me!" she cried. "But it leaves one rather hungry, doesn't it?" "_Hungry!_" she hurled back at him. "I could eat a--I don't know what!" XV CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL A Long-distance Eclogue 1902 _Morrison._ Hello! Hello! Is that you, Wetherbee? _Wetherbee._ Yes. Who are you? What do you want with me? _Morrison._ Oh, nothing much. It's Morrison, you know; Morrison--down at Clamhurst Shortsands. _Wetherbee._ Oh! Why, Morrison, of course! Of course, I know! How are you, Morrison? And, by the way, _Where_ are you? What! You never mean to say You are down there _yet_? Well, by the Holy Poker! What are you doing there, you ancient joker?