"My wife's brother," Ridley explained to Hilda, whom he failed to
remember, "has a house here, which he has lent us. I was sitting on a
rock thinking of nothing at all when Elliot started up like a fairy in a
pantomime."
"Our chicken got into the salt," Hewet said dolefully to Susan. "Nor is
it true that bananas include moisture as well as sustenance."
Hirst was already drinking.
"We've been cursing you," said Ridley in answer to Mrs. Elliot's kind
enquiries about his wife. "You tourists eat up all the eggs, Helen
tells me. That's an eye-sore too"--he nodded his head at the hotel.
"Disgusting luxury, I call it. We live with pigs in the drawing-room."
"The food is not at all what it ought to be, considering the price,"
said Mrs. Paley seriously. "But unless one goes to a hotel where is one
to go to?"
"Stay at home," said Ridley. "I often wish I had! Everyone ought to stay
at home. But, of course, they won't."
Mrs. Paley conceived a certain grudge against Ridley, who seemed to be
criticising her habits after an acquaintance of five minutes.
"I believe in foreign travel myself," she stated, "if one knows one's
native land, which I think I can honestly say I do. I should not allow
any one to travel until they had visited Kent and Dorsetshire--Kent for
the hops, and Dorsetshire for its old stone cottages. There is nothing
to compare with them here.
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