ink I've proved it for the
hundredth--or is it the thousandth?--time.

We left Wells (which depressed me as all cathedral towns do, because
everybody, and even every building, seems so unco guid) to run through
the Cheddar ravine, which, I fancy, though I don't know and care less,
is among the Mendip Hills. I woke up with a headache, not having slept
on account of a million church clocks and bells which were deadly busy
all night, and I felt I should be no better until I'd had it out with
the enemy.

Sir Lionel, as you know, can be a pleasant companion when he chooses,
and he's so good-looking in his soldier way that I can't help admiring
him when I'm not hating him, but it is a strain on the nerves, headache
or no headache, sitting next a man and trying every minute to make him
like you better than he does the woman he wants to be with, who is
sitting behind him. It means that you must be amusing and witty and
interested in everything he says. But how can you be witty when the only
thing you want to say is "devil and damn," of which he would violently
disapprove from a lady's lips (or pen)? And how can you be interested in
all he says when he discourses about mouldy old saints, and legends, and
history, and things over and done with long ago, like that? What do I
care if St. Dunstan--of whom I heard too much at Glastonbury--saved King
Edmund, hunting in the Mendips, from falling over Cheddar Cliff, horse
and man? Why, I don't even know who Edmund was, or when he happened.
Celtic relics, found in caves, are less than nothing to me, and Roman
coins are a mere aggravation when one is bothered how to get current
coin of the realm. Botany bores me, too, though I have been studying it,
together with many other dull things which, unfortunately for me, Sir
Lionel likes.

Well, we went up the Mendip Hills by way of an obscure little village
called Priddy, which seemed important to Sir L. because they found some
lead pigs in a mine there marked Imp. Vespasianus, and a few old Roman
dice, and brooches like safety-pins. It would be much more to the point
if he would take an interest in what _I_ wear, rather than concentrating
his attention on the way b. c. Roman miners or soldiers
contrived to fasten their rags together. It would console one for
invariably losing one's pins and hatpins when one wants them most, if
one could think future generations would grow emotional over them. Yet,
on the whole, I should prefer it done by a