feeling horribly
sick. The only thing that occurred to Peter, in the face of the dominant
Rodney, was to say, "I'm a teetotaller." Rodney nodded and held the flask
to his lips. Rodney was looking rather worried.

Peter said presently, still at length in the dust, "I'm frightfully
sorry. I suppose I'm tired. Didn't we get up rather early and walk rather
fast?"

"I suppose," said Rodney, "you oughtn't to have come. What's wrong, you
rotter?"

Peter sat up, and there lay the road again, stretching and stretching
into the pink morning.

"Thirty kilometres to breakfast," murmured Peter. "And I don't know that
I want any, even then. Wrong?... Oh ... well, I suppose it's heart. I
have one, you know, of a sort. A nuisance, it's always been. Not
dangerous, but just in the way. I'm sorry, Rodney--I really am."

Rodney said again, "You absolute rotter. Why didn't you tell me? What in
the name of anything induced you to walk at all? You needn't have."

Peter looked down the long road that wound and wound into the morning
land. "I wanted to," he said. "I wanted to most awfully.... I wanted to
try it.... I thought perhaps it was the one thing.... Football's off
for me, you know--and most other things.... Only diabolo left ... and
ping-pong ... and jig-saw. I'm quite good at those ... but oh, I did want
to be able to walk. Horribly I wanted it."

"Well," said Rodney practically, "it's extremely obvious that you aren't.
You ought to have got into that thing, of course. Only then, as you
remarked, you would have felt sick. Really, Margery...."

"Oh, I know," Peter stopped him hastily. "_Don't_ say the usual things;
I really feel too unwell to bear them. I know I'm made in Germany and all
that--I've been hearing so all my life. And now I should like you to go
on to Florence, and I'll follow, very slow. It's all very well, Rodney,
but you were going at about seven miles an hour. Talk of motors--I
couldn't see the scenery as we rushed by. That's such a Vandal-like
way of crossing Tuscany."

"Well, you can cross the rest of Tuscany by train. There's a station at
Montelupo; we shall be there directly."

Peter, abruptly renouncing his intention of getting up, lay back giddily.
The marvellous morning was splendid on the mountains.

"How extremely lucky," remarked Peter weakly, "that I wasn't in this
position when Denis came by. Denis usually does come by at these crucial
moments you know--always has. He probably thinks by now that