The girls laughed; they were too much interested in country life to bother about their appearance. Boots were made to keep out moisture and get a good grip of muddy slopes: caps were meant to stay on one's head, not to show off one's ears. Besides, they were ugly; they had decided as much when they were still children, and, now that they were twenty-one and nineteen, would be foolish to begin repining. Arabella's ankles might be slim, but her teeth were large and prominent; her eyes were pale as the wintry sky above them; her hands were knotted and raw; her nose stuck to her face like a piece of mud thrown at a fence; her hair resembled seaweed. As for Constantia, her nose was much too large; so was her tongue; so were her hands; her eyes were globular, like marbles of brown agate; everything protruded; she was like a person who has been struck on the back of the head in a crowd. "The question is," said Arabella, "are we to drive over to Exeter to meet them? Because if we are I must tell Crowdy to see about putting us up some sandwiches." "Well, unless you're very eager to go," the dowager pleaded, "I should appreciate your company. Were I left quite alone, I might get a headache, and I am so anxious to appear cheerful. I think we ought to assume that Dorothy will be as nervous as we are. I think it would be kind to assume that." "I vote for letting Deacock take the car by himself," Constantia declared. "I always feel awkward at meeting even old friends at a station, and it'll be so awfully hard to talk with the wind humming in my ears." When the noise of the car had died away among the knolls and hollows of the great park the dowager turned to her daughters: "It's such a fine day for the season of the year that perhaps I might take a little drive in the chaise." It was indeed a fine day of silver and faint celeste, such a one as in January only the West Country can give. The leafless woods and isolated clumps of trees breathed a dusky purple bloom like fruit; the grass was peacock green. The dowager, moved by the brilliance of the landscape and the weather to a complete apprehension of the fact that she was no longer mistress of Clare, had been seized with a desire to take a last sentimental survey of her dominion. Although her daughters had made other plans for the morning, they willingly put them aside to encourage such unwonted energy. While the pony was being harnessed, the dowager took Arabella's arm and walked up and down the pergola that ran like a battlement along a spur of the gardens and was the most conspicuous object to those approaching Clare Court through the park.