find out about this woman.
Moreover, the acceptance of their 'salt' would silence him politically
if she knew anything of that type of man, who always had something in
him of the Arab's creed. Her mind, that of a capable administrator,
took in all the practical significance of this incident, which, although
untoward, was not without its comic side to one disposed to find zest
and humour in everything that did not absolutely run counter to her
interests and philosophy.

The voice of little Ann broke in on her reflections.

"I'm going to Auntie Babs now."

"Very well; give me a kiss first."

Little Ann thrust up her face, so that its sudden little nose penetrated
Lady Valleys' soft curving lips....

When early that same afternoon Courtier, leaning on a stick, passed
from his room out on to the terrace, he was confronted by three sunlit
peacocks marching slowly across a lawn towards a statue of Diana. With
incredible dignity those birds moved, as if never in their lives had
they been hurried. They seemed indeed to know that when they got there,
there would be nothing for them to do but to come back again. Beyond
them, through the tall trees, over some wooded foot-hills of the
moorland and a promised land of pinkish fields, pasture, and orchards,
the prospect stretched to the far sea. Heat clothed this view with a
kind of opalescence, a fairy garment, transmuting all values, so that
the four square walls and tall chimneys of the pottery-works a few miles
down the valley seemed to Courtier like a vision of some old fortified
Italian town. His sensations, finding himself in this galley, were
peculiar. For his feeling towards Miltoun, whom he had twice met at Mrs.
Noel's, was, in spite of disagreements, by no means unfriendly; while
his feeling towards Miltoun's family was not yet in existence.
Having lived from hand to mouth, and in many countries, since he
left Westminster School, he had now practically no class feelings. An
attitude of hostility to aristocracy because it was aristocracy, was as
incomprehensible to him as an attitude of deference.

His sensations habitually shaped themselves in accordance with those two
permanent requirements of his nature, liking for adventure, and hatred
of tyranny. The labourer who beat his wife, the shopman who sweated his
'hands,' the parson who consigned his parishioners to hell, the peer who
rode roughshod--all were equally odious to him. He thought of people as
individuals, an