must be rather difficult climbing up at night," thought Dahlia.

"Not if you get a good take-off, Dahlia," said Simpson earnestly.

"Simpson got a good one off my face," explained Thomas.

"My dear old chap, I was frightfully sorry. I did come down at once and
tell you how sorry I was, didn't I?"

"You stepped back on to it," said Thomas shortly, and he turned his
attention to the coffee.

Our table had finished breakfast. Dahlia and Myra got up slowly, and
Archie and I filled our pipes and followed them out.

"Well, we'll leave you to it," said Archie to the other table.
"Personally, I think it's Thomas's turn to step on Simpson. You ought to
assert yourself, Thomas, anyhow. Throw some jam at him and then let
bygones be bygones. But don't be long, because there's a good view
coming."

The good view came, and then another and another, and they merged
together and became one long moving panorama of beauty. We stood in the
corridor and drank it in ... and at intervals we said "Oh-h!" and "Oh, I
say!" and "Oh, I say, _really!_" And there was one particular spot--I
wish I could remember where, so that it might be marked by a suitable
tablet--at the sight of which Simpson was overheard to say "_Mon Dieu_!"
for (probably) the first time in his life.

"You know, all these are olive trees, you chaps," he said every five
minutes. "I wonder if there are any olives growing on them?"

"Too early," said Archie. "It's the sardine season now."

It was at Cannes that we saw the first oranges.

"That does it," I said to Myra. "We're really here. And look, there's a
lemon tree. Give me the oranges and lemons and you can have all the
palms and the cactuses and the olives."

"Like polar bears in the arctic region," said Myra.

I thought for a moment. Superficially there is very little resemblance
between an orange and a polar bear.

"Like polar bears," I said hopefully.

"I mean," luckily she went on, "polar bears do it for you in the polar
regions. You really know you're there then. Give me the polar bears, I
always say, and you can keep the seals and the walruses and the
penguins. It's the hall-mark."

"Eight. I knew you meant something. In London," I went on, "it is
raining. Looking out of my window I see a lamp-post (not in flower)
beneath a low grey sky. Here we see oranges against a blue sky a million
miles deep. What a blend! Myra, let's go to a fancy-dress ball when we
got back. You go as an orange and I'll go as