"

"Happy place! Happy people!"

"But even this place isn't the beginning of things here. Carnac was
older than this. And older still is Avebury. Have you heard in America
of Avebury? It may have predated this place, they think, by another
thousand years."

"Avebury?" said the lady who was called Belinda.

"But what is this Avebury?" asked V.V. "I've never heard of the place."

"I thought it was a lord," said Belinda.

Sir Richmond, with occasional appeals to Dr. Martineau, embarked upon
an account of the glory and wonder of Avebury. Possibly he exaggerated
Avebury....

It was Dr. Martineau who presently brought this disquisition upon
Avebury to a stop by a very remarkable gesture. He looked at his watch.
He drew it out ostentatiously, a thick, respectable gold watch, for
the doctor was not the sort of man to wear his watch upon his wrist. He
clicked it open and looked at it. Thereby he would have proclaimed his
belief this encounter was an entirely unnecessary interruption of his
healing duologue with Sir Richmond, which must now be resumed.

But this action had scarcely the effect he had intended it to have. It
set the young lady who was called Belinda asking about ways and means of
getting to Salisbury; it brought to light the distressing fact that V.V.
had the beginnings of a chafed heel. Once he had set things going they
moved much too quickly for the doctor to deflect their course. He
found himself called upon to make personal sacrifices to facilitate the
painless transport of the two ladies to Salisbury, where their luggage
awaited them at the Old George Hotel. In some way too elusive to trace,
it became evident that he and Sir Richmond were to stay at this same Old
George Hotel. The luggage was to be shifted to the top of the coupe,
the young lady called V.V. was to share the interior of the car with
Sir Richmond, while the lady named Belinda, for whom Dr. Martineau
was already developing a very strong dislike, was to be thrust into an
extreme proximity with him and the balance of the luggage in the dicky
seat behind.

Sir Richmond had never met with a young woman with a genuine historical
imagination before, and he was evidently very greatly excited and
resolved to get the utmost that there was to be got out of this
encounter.

Section 3

Sir Richmond displayed a complete disregard of the sufferings of Dr.
Martineau, shamefully compressed behind him. Of these he was to hear
later. He ran his over