and with smiles and jests helped me to my feet.

"Was I the traveller who had come from Seth?"

"Yes."

"Oh, then that was well. They had heard such a traveller was on the
road, and had come a little way down the path, as far as might be without
fatigue, to meet him."

"Would I eat with them?" these amiable strangers asked, pushing their soft
warm fingers into mine and ringing me round with a circle. "But firstly
might they help me out of my clothes? It was hot, and these things were
cumbersome." As to the eating, I was agreeable enough seeing how casual
meals had been with me lately, but my clothes, though Heaven knows they
were getting horribly ragged and travel-stained, I clung to desperately.

My new friends shrugged their dimpled shoulders and, arguments being
tedious, at once squatted round me in the dappled shade of a big tree
and produced their stores of never failing provisions. After a pleasant
little meal taken thus in the open and with all the simplicity Martians
delight in, we got to talking about those yellow canoes which were
bobbing about on the blue waters of the bay.

"Would you like to see where they are grown?" asked an individual basking
by my side.

"Grown!" I answered with incredulity. "Built, you mean. Never in my
life did I hear of growing boats."