But Miss Allan returned, "I always like to get to the top"; and it was true, although she was a big woman, stiff in the joints, and unused to donkey-riding, but as her holidays were few she made the most of them.
The vivacious white figure rode well in front; she had somehow possessed herself of a leafy branch and wore it round her hat like a garland.
They went on for a few minutes in silence.
"The view will be wonderful," Hewet assured them, turning round in his saddle and smiling encouragement. Rachel caught his eye and smiled too. They struggled on for some time longer, nothing being heard but the clatter of hooves striving on the loose stones.
Then they saw that Evelyn was off her ass, and that Mr. Perrott was standing in the attitude of a statesman in Parliament Square, stretching an arm of stone towards the view. A little to the left of them was a low ruined wall, the stump of an Elizabethan watch-tower.
"I couldn't have stood it much longer," Mrs. Elliot confided to Mrs. Thornbury, but the excitement of being at the top in another moment and seeing the view prevented any one from answering her.
One after another they came out on the flat space at the top and stood overcome with wonder. Before them they beheld an immense space-- grey sands running into forest, and forest merging in mountains, and mountains washed by air, the infinite distances of South America.
A river ran across the plain, as flat as the land, and appearing quite as stationary. The effect of so much space was at first rather chilling. They felt themselves very small, and for some time no one said anything. Then Evelyn exclaimed, "Splendid!"
She took hold of the hand that was next her; it chanced to be Miss Allan's hand.
"North--South--East--West," said Miss Allan, jerking her head slightly towards the points of the compass.
Hewet, who had gone a little in front, looked up at his guests as if to justify himself for having brought them. He observed how strangely the people standing in a row with their figures bent slightly forward and their clothes plastered by the wind to the shape of their bodies resembled naked statues. On their pedestal of earth they looked unfamiliar and noble, but in another moment they had broken their rank, and he had to see to the laying out of food.
Hirst came to his help, and they handed packets of chicken and bread from one to another.
As St. John gave Helen her packet she looked him full in the face and said:
"Do you remember--two women?"
He looked at her sharply.
"I do," he answered.
"So you're the two women!" Hewet exclaimed, looking from Helen to Rachel.
"Your lights tempted us," said Helen. "We watched you playing cards, but we never knew that we were being watched."
"It was like a thing in a play," Rachel added.
"And Hirst couldn't describe you," said Hewet.
It was certainly odd to have seen Helen and to find nothing to say about her.
Hughling Elliot put up his eyeglass and grasped the situation.
"I don't know of anything more dreadful," he said, pulling at the joint of a chicken's leg, "than being seen when one isn't conscious of it.
One feels sure one has been caught doing something ridiculous-- looking at one's tongue in a hansom, for instance."
Now the others ceased to look at the view, and drawing together sat down in a circle round the baskets.
"And yet those little looking-glasses in hansoms have a fascination of their own," said Mrs. Thornbury. "One's features look so different when one can only see a bit of them."
"There will soon be very few hansom cabs left," said Mrs. Elliot.
"And four-wheeled cabs--I assure you even at Oxford it's almost impossible to get a four-wheeled cab."
"I wonder what happens to the horses," said Susan.
"Veal pie," said Arthur.
"It's high time that horses should become extinct anyhow," said Hirst.
"They're distressingly ugly, besides being vicious."
But Susan, who had been brought up to understand that the horse is the noblest of God's creatures, could not agree, and Venning thought Hirst an unspeakable ass, but was too polite not to continue the conversation.
"When they see us falling out of aeroplanes they get some of their own back, I expect," he remarked.
"You fly?" said old Mr. Thornbury, putting on his spectacles to look at him.
"I hope to, some day," said Arthur.
