When we were clear of Kingston, and winging lightly along the familiar Portsmouth Road, with its dark pines and purple gleams of heather, I began to feel an exhilaration scarcely short of treacherous to my principles.  We were now putting on speed, and running as fast as most trains on the South-Western, yet the sensation was far removed from any I had experienced in travelling by rail, even on famous lines, which give glorious views if one does not mind cinders in the eye or the chance of having one’s head knocked off like a ripe apple.  I seemed to be floating in a great opaline sea of pure, fresh air; for such dust as we raised was beaten down from the tonneau by the screen, and it did not trouble us.  Our speed appeared to turn the country into a panorama flying by for our amusement; and yet, fast as we went, to my surprise I was able to appreciate every feature, every incident of the road.  Each separate beauty of the way was threaded like a bead on a rosary.

Here was Sandown Park, which I had regarded as the goal of a respectable drive from town, with horses; but we were taking it, so to speak, in our first stride.  Esher was no sooner left behind than quaint old sleepy Cobham came to view; between there and Ripley was but a gliding step over a road which slipped like velvet under our wheels.  Then a fringe of trees netted across a blue, distant sea of billowing hills, and a few minutes later we were sailing under Guildford’s suspended clock.

It was somewhere near the hour of one when Molly brought the car gently to a standstill by the roadside, and announced that she would not go a yard further without lunch.  The chauffeur successfully took up the part of butler at a moment’s notice, busying himself with the baskets, spreading a picnic cloth under a shady tree, and putting a bottle of Graves to cool in a neighbouring brook.  Meanwhile Molly was doing mysterious things with her chafing-dish and several little china jars.  By the time Jack and I had with awkward alacrity bestowed plates, glasses, knives, and forks on the most hummocky portions of the cloth, white and rosy flakes of lobster a la Newburg were simmering appetisingly in a creamy froth.

I was deeply interested in this cult of the chafing-dish, which could, in an incredibly short time, serve up by the wayside a little feast fit for a king—­who had not got dyspepsia.

“Can’t you imagine the programme if we had gone to an inn?” asked Jack, proud of his bride’s handiwork.  “We should have walked into a dingy dining-room, with brown wallpaper and four steel engravings of bloodthirsty scenes from the Old Testament.  A sleepy head waiter would have looked at me with a polite but puzzled expression, as if at a loss to know why on earth we had come.  I should have enquired deprecatingly:  ‘What can you give us for lunch?’ What would he have replied?”

“There’s only one possible answer to that conundrum, and it doesn’t take any guessing,” said I.  “The reply would have been:  ’Cold ’am or beef, sir; chops, if you choose to wait.’  Those words are probably now being spoken to some hundreds of sad travellers less fortunate than our favoured and sylvan selves.”