‘My feet must be extraordinarily small,’ said Isabel to Kingston. ‘I seem to be always putting them into it. They go into the most incredibly tiny loopholes. I don’t believe I could walk across the lid of a pepper-pot without putting my foot into it somehow.’ She stuck out both her feet in front of her, and gazed at them dispassionately. The action may have been an instinctive appeal for admiration. The feet, though large, were beautifully shaped, with a suggestion of strength and swiftness in their lines. But Kingston angrily compelled himself to notice that they overlapped their shoes, that one shoe had lost its buckle, and that the stocking above each descended in wrinkles that betrayed a weakness in the matter of suspenders. ‘Cover them up,’ he said. ‘Mine eyes dazzle.’ ‘They haven’t died young yet, though,’ replied Isabel, finishing the quotation. ‘Perhaps they will, though--the feet, I mean.’ ‘Why do you ask about insurance, Isabel?’ ‘I was thinking that you might welsh the Powers that be, and burn the house down, and get the money to build a decent one. This great garish glassy palace is not a bit at home here among the hills. You want something sombre and quiet and self-sufficient as they are--something that will be at ease with them. This house of yours is about as much at ease among the hills as a brewer’s wife having tea with half a dozen Dowager-Empresses. You want a building that won’t be fussy and assertive.’ ‘Then want must be my master. You have the most placid way of suggesting things. Do you always get what you want yourself, quite irrespective of the means?’ ‘What is the use of wanting things,’ said Isabel defiantly, ‘if one doesn’t get them? One might as well never want them.’ ‘But what about other people? If they object? If you can only win over their dead bodies?’ ‘Oh, they must look out for themselves. Every herring must hang by its own tail. It is everybody’s business to get what they want. If they can prevent me from doing as I wish, why, then they may; and if they can’t, well, I romp in; and if they get in my way while I am doing it, why, so much the worse for them. They go under.’ ‘There’s your crude individualism again,’ protested Kingston. Then he turned to his wife, determined to bring her into the dialogue. She was soberly conversing with Lady Adela over the Stores List. ‘Are you an individualist, Gundred?’ asked her husband. ‘Isabel’s a terror; she has no respect for other people.’ Gundred finished her sentence calmly. ‘Besides, they say that spotted ones are bad for the eyesight,’ she concluded, then prepared to answer her husband. ‘What did you say, dear? Of course one must respect other people, or how are other people to do the same to us?’ Unlike Kingston, Isabel was inclined to resent her cousin’s invasion. ‘Oh, Gundred doesn’t count,’ she cried. ‘Gundred’s a civilized woman. Now, you and I are only pagans, Kingston.’