And about time too, as I notice on re-reading what I have written. Few things are more profoundly boring and unprofitable than literary descriptions. For the writer, it is true, there is a certain amusement to be derived from the hunt for apt expressive words. Carried away by the excitement of the chase he dashes on, regardless of the poor readers who follow toilsomely through his stiff and clayey pages like the runners at the tail of a hunt, seeing nothing of the fun. All writers are also readers—though perhaps I should make exceptions in favour of a few of my colleagues who make a specialty of native wood-notes—and must therefore know how dreary description is. But that does not prevent them from inflicting upon others all that they themselves have suffered. Indeed I sometimes think that some authors must write as they do purely out of a desire for revenge. Mrs. Aldwinkle’s other guests had arrived and were waiting for us. I was introduced and found them all equally charming. The little niece rushed to Mrs. Aldwinkle’s assistance; the young man who had rowed the _patino_ rushed in his turn to the little niece’s and insisted on carrying all the things of which she had relieved her aunt. The old man with the red face, who had talked about the clouds, looked on benevolently at this little scene. But another elderly gentleman with a white beard, whom I had not seen before, seemed to view it with a certain disapproval. The young lady who had talked about the whiteness of her legs and who turned out to be my distinguished colleague, Miss Mary Thriplow, was now dressed in a little green frock with a white turned-down collar, white cuffs and buttons, which made her look like a schoolgirl in a comic opera by Offenbach. The brown young man stood near her. I got out of the car, refused all proffered assistance and contrived, a little wamblingly, it is true, to mount the steps. “You must be very careful for a little,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle with a maternal solicitude. “These,” she added, waving her hand in the direction of a vista of empty saloons, the entrance to which we were just then passing, “these are the apartments of the Princesses.”