“I’d have ’em all shot,” said Mr. Venning.

“Oh, but the darling puppies,” said Susan.

“Jolly little chaps,” said Mr. Venning.  “Look here, you’ve got nothing to eat.”  A great wedge of cake was handed Susan on the point of a trembling knife.  Her hand trembled too as she took it.

“I have such a dear dog at home,” said Mrs. Elliot.

“My parrot can’t stand dogs,” said Mrs. Paley, with the air of one making a confidence.  “I always suspect that he (or she) was teased by a dog when I was abroad.”

“You didn’t get far this morning, Miss Warrington,” said Mr. Venning.

“It was hot,” she answered.  Their conversation became private, owing to Mrs. Paley’s deafness and the long sad history which Mrs. Elliot had embarked upon of a wire-haired terrier, white with just one black spot, belonging to an uncle of hers, which had committed suicide.  “Animals do commit suicide,” she sighed, as if she asserted a painful fact.

“Couldn’t we explore the town this evening?” Mr. Venning suggested.

“My aunt—­” Susan began.

“You deserve a holiday,” he said.  “You’re always doing things for other people.”

“But that’s my life,” she said, under cover of refilling the teapot.

“That’s no one’s life,” he returned, “no young person’s.  You’ll come?”

“I should like to come,” she murmured.

At this moment Mrs. Elliot looked up and exclaimed, “Oh, Hugh!  He’s bringing some one,” she added.

“He would like some tea,” said Mrs. Paley.  “Susan, run and get some cups—­there are the two young men.”

“We’re thirsting for tea,” said Mr. Elliot.  “You know Mr. Ambrose, Hilda?  We met on the hill.”

“He dragged me in,” said Ridley, “or I should have been ashamed.  I’m dusty and dirty and disagreeable.”  He pointed to his boots which were white with dust, while a dejected flower drooping in his buttonhole, like an exhausted animal over a gate, added to the effect of length and untidiness.  He was introduced to the others.  Mr. Hewet and Mr. Hirst brought chairs, and tea began again, Susan pouring cascades of water from pot to pot, always cheerfully, and with the competence of long use.

“My wife’s brother,” Ridley explained to Hilda, whom he failed to remember, “has a house here, which he has lent us.  I was sitting on a rock thinking of nothing at all when Elliot started up like a fairy in a pantomime.”

“Our chicken got into the salt,” Hewet said dolefully to Susan.  “Nor is it true that bananas include moisture as well as sustenance.”

Hirst was already drinking.

“We’ve been cursing you,” said Ridley in answer to Mrs. Elliot’s kind enquiries about his wife.  “You tourists eat up all the eggs, Helen tells me.  That’s an eye-sore too”—­he nodded his head at the hotel.  “Disgusting luxury, I call it.  We live with pigs in the drawing-room.”

“The food is not at all what it ought to be, considering the price,” said Mrs. Paley seriously.  “But unless one goes to a hotel where is one to go to?”