“I wish I could see Vernay-les-Vouvières,” he said. “A beautiful country yours must be, so near the Alps.—We have sunny days in England, you know. It’s a French superstition to think that English people go staggering about in a fog all the year round. You ought to have got over that,” he added. “Our weather is as good as the weather in Northern France; every bit.” “But different, Giles. As good; but not so happy. Never like wine, I think. Always there is something soft and sleepy in the air. After the air of France it is like milk.” “Milk is a very excellent thing.” “Yes. Excellent. As a food. But it does not make one want to sing.” To this Giles said nothing. “For a French town Dieppe is not so specially beautiful,” Alix took up presently; for she and Giles knew each other so well that a disagreement could be allowed to fall between them disregarded. “I do not think that for a French town it has special beauty; yet, seen like this, with the harbours, and the wharves, and houses—all so golden, do you not think it is very lovely?” Giles had just been thinking so. “Yes. Quite lovely,” he admitted. “For a French town it’s rather rambling and shambling, too, and I like that.” “Ah, but it keeps its dignity all the same,” said Alix. “It has gone where it meant to go and when it got there it stood up well.” “We have dignified towns,” said Giles. “Edinburgh; you must see Edinburgh one day, Alix; and Bath; and Ludlow. Of course, as to ramble, London is a bad offender; but London is beautiful all the same.” “Beautiful, do you think, Giles? Beautiful you mean, then, as one might find the face of a dear, funny old great-grandmother beautiful, for what it means; but not for what it looks; I think it a very ugly town,” said Alix in her tone of happy statement—for Alix was very happy to-day. “It is like an old great-grand-mother over a tea-pot; and Paris is like a goddess with a wreath.” “I like old great-grandmothers much better than goddesses,” said Giles.