"So'm I," she said quietly. "And now--I did have a dressing-case once.
And a steamer-trunk.... D'you think it's any good looking for them?"

Twenty minutes later we were all three--four with Nobby--on the front
seat of the Rolls, which was nosing its way gingerly out of the town.

"I wonder if you realize," said Adèle, "what a beautiful country you
live in."

At the moment we were immediately between an unpleasantly crowded tram
and a fourth-rate beerhouse.

"Don't you have trams?" said I. "Or does alcohol mean so much to you? I
suppose prohibition is a bit of a jar."

"To tell you the truth, I was thinking of the Isle of Wight. It looked
so exquisite as we were coming in. Just like a toy continent out of a
giant's nursery."

"Before the day is out," I prophesied, "you shall see finer things than
that."

Once clear of the streets, I gave the car her head.

For a while we slid past low-lying ground, verdant and fresh and
blowing, but flat and sparsely timbered, with coppices here and there
and, sometimes, elms in the hedgerows, and, now and again, a parcel of
youngster oaks about a green--fair country enough at any time, and at
this summer sundown homely and radiant. But there was better to come.