in a rough-and-ready way.
She expects you back to tea, too, after you have had a look at Howards
End. I wonder what you'll think of the place. I wouldn't touch it with
tongs myself. Do sit down! It's a measly little place."

"I shall enjoy seeing it," said Margaret, feeling, for the first time,
shy.

"You'll see it at its worst, for Bryce decamped abroad last Monday
without even arranging for a charwoman to clear up after him. I never
saw such a disgraceful mess. It's unbelievable. He wasn't in the house a
month."

"I've more than a little bone to pick with Bryce," called Henry from the
inner chamber.

"Why did he go so suddenly?"

"Invalid type; couldn't sleep."

"Poor fellow!"

"Poor fiddlesticks!" said Mr. Wilcox, joining them. "He had the
impudence to put up notice-boards without as much as saying with your
leave or by your leave. Charles flung them down."

"Yes, I flung them down," said Charles modestly.

"I've sent a telegram after him, and a pretty sharp one, too. He, and
he in person, is responsible for the upkeep of that house for the next
three years."

"The keys are at the farm; we wouldn't have the keys."

"Quite right."

"Dolly would have taken them, but I was in, fortunately."

"What's Mr. Bryce like?" asked Margaret.

But nobody cared. Mr. Bryce was the tenant, who had no right to sublet;
to have defined him further was a waste of time. On his misdeeds they
descanted profusely, until the girl who had been typing the strong
letter game out with it. Mr. Wilcox added his signature. "Now we'll be
off," said he.

A motor-drive, a form of felicity detested by Margaret, awaited her.
Charles saw them in, civil to the last, and in a moment the offices of
the Imperial and West African Rubber Company faded away. But it was not
an impressive drive. Perhaps the weather was to blame, being grey
and banked high with weary clouds. Perhaps Hertfordshire is scarcely
intended for motorists. Did not a gentleman once motor so quickly
through Westmoreland that he missed it? and if Westmoreland can
be missed, it will fare ill with a county whose delicate structure
particularly needs the attentive eye. Hertfordshire is England at
its quietest, with little emphasis of river and hill; it is England
meditative. If Drayton were with us again to write a new edition of
his incomparable poem, he would sing the nymphs of Hertfordshire as
indeterminate of feature, with hair obfuscated by the London smoke.
Their eyes