certain man in my own
generation.

The moment we got away from Priddy, where a lot of starfish roads come
together, my spirits rose. The country began to look theatrical, which
was a pleasant change after Wells, and all my native dramaticness began
to surge in me. I felt on my mettle; and when Sir Lionel talked about
visiting the Cheddar Caverns I said to myself: "My name isn't Gwen
Senter if I don't get hold of the girl in a cave, and tell her a thing
or two." It can't be easy to escape from people in caves, I thought; and
so it proved. But I haven't come to that, yet.

I really enjoyed the Cheddar Ravine. It is the sort of scenery that
appeals to me. Hills rose, wild and rocky, shutting in our road, and
brigands would have been appropriate, as in some mountain pass of Spain.
There were sheer gray cliffs like castles and burnt-out churches, and
watch-towers.

Said Sir Lionel: "Here we come, straight from one of the finest
cathedrals made by man, to see what Nature can do in the way of
ecclesiastical architecture; facades here as fine as any west front, and
vaguely rich with decoration." I purred, of course, agreeing, and
pointing out graceful spires, empty niches for saints, tombs for
cardinals, and statues of kings and bishops with crowned and mitred
heads, babbling on thus with hurried intelligence, lest Ellaline should
jump in ahead.

It's the kind of place--this weird alley of colourful rock--where you
feel things must happen, and I determined they _should_ happen; a hidden
place you are surprised at being able to enter, as if the door had been
shut by enchantment a few million years, and then forcibly opened for
modern motorists. I used this idea on Sir Lionel, in a form too
elaborate to waste on a sister, and made a distinct hit. But Ellaline
got in a little deadly work at the first cave. She began talking fairy
talk with Sir Lionel, and that not being my style, I had to let her have
her head.

Fancy _my_ pretending to be a child who, having lost itself, suddenly
sees a hole in a rock, crawls in for shelter from beasts of the forest,
and finds that by accident it has stumbled on the entrance to fairyland!
But Miss Lethbridge had quite a fairy game with Sir Lionel, who, she
played, was his ancestor King Arthur, carried to this strange place by
the four queens who rowed his body across the lake. "You can be one of
the queens, if you like," she graciously said to me. "And dear Mrs.
Norton another?" I suggeste