t
her.

Hughling Elliot put up his eyeglass and grasped the situation.

"I don't know of anything more dreadful," he said, pulling at the joint
of a chicken's leg, "than being seen when one isn't conscious of it. One
feels sure one has been caught doing something ridiculous--looking at
one's tongue in a hansom, for instance."

Now the others ceased to look at the view, and drawing together sat down
in a circle round the baskets.

"And yet those little looking-glasses in hansoms have a fascination of
their own," said Mrs. Thornbury. "One's features look so different when
one can only see a bit of them."

"There will soon be very few hansom cabs left," said Mrs. Elliot. "And
four-wheeled cabs--I assure you even at Oxford it's almost impossible to
get a four-wheeled cab."

"I wonder what happens to the horses," said Susan.

"Veal pie," said Arthur.

"It's high time that horses should become extinct anyhow," said Hirst.
"They're distressingly ugly, besides being vicious."

But Susan, who had been brought up to understand that the horse is the
noblest of God's creatures, could not agree, and Venning thought Hirst
an unspeakable ass, but was too polite not to continue the conversation.

"When they see us falling out of aeroplanes they get some of their own
back, I expect," he remarked.

"You fly?" said old Mr. Thornbury, putting on his spectacles to look at
him.

"I hope to, some day," said Arthur.

Here flying was discussed at length, and Mrs. Thornbury delivered an
opinion which was almost a speech to the effect that it would be quite
necessary in time of war, and in England we were terribly behind-hand.
"If I were a young fellow," she concluded, "I should certainly qualify."
It was odd to look at the little elderly lady, in her grey coat and
skirt, with a sandwich in her hand, her eyes lighting up with zeal
as she imagined herself a young man in an aeroplane. For some reason,
however, the talk did not run easily after this, and all they said was
about drink and salt and the view. Suddenly Miss Allan, who was
seated with her back to the ruined wall, put down her sandwich,
picked something off her neck, and remarked, "I'm covered with little
creatures." It was true, and the discovery was very welcome. The ants
were pouring down a glacier of loose earth heaped between the stones of
the ruin--large brown ants with polished bodies. She held out one on the
back of her hand for Helen to look at.

"Suppose they