But this action had scarcely the effect he had intended it to have.  It set the young lady who was called Belinda asking about ways and means of getting to Salisbury; it brought to light the distressing fact that V.V. had the beginnings of a chafed heel.  Once he had set things going they moved much too quickly for the doctor to deflect their course.  He found himself called upon to make personal sacrifices to facilitate the painless transport of the two ladies to Salisbury, where their luggage awaited them at the Old George Hotel.  In some way too elusive to trace, it became evident that he and Sir Richmond were to stay at this same Old George Hotel.  The luggage was to be shifted to the top of the coupe, the young lady called V.V. was to share the interior of the car with Sir Richmond, while the lady named Belinda, for whom Dr. Martineau was already developing a very strong dislike, was to be thrust into an extreme proximity with him and the balance of the luggage in the dicky seat behind.

Sir Richmond had never met with a young woman with a genuine historical imagination before, and he was evidently very greatly excited and resolved to get the utmost that there was to be got out of this encounter.

Section 3

Sir Richmond displayed a complete disregard of the sufferings of Dr. Martineau, shamefully compressed behind him.  Of these he was to hear later.  He ran his overcrowded little car, overcrowded so far as the dicky went, over the crest of the Down and down into Amesbury and on to Salisbury, stopping to alight and stretch the legs of the party when they came in sight of Old Sarum.

“Certainly they can do with a little stretching,” said Dr. Martineau grimly.

This charming young woman had seized upon the imagination of Sir Richmond to the temporary exclusion of all other considerations.  The long Downland gradients, quivering very slightly with the vibration of the road, came swiftly and easily to meet and pass the throbbing little car as he sat beside her and talked to her.  He fell into that expository manner which comes so easily to the native entertaining the visitor from abroad.

“In England, it seems to me there are four main phases of history.  Four.  Avebury, which I would love to take you to see to-morrow.  Stonehenge.  Old Sarum, which we shall see in a moment as a great grassy mound on our right as we come over one of these crests.  Each of them represents about a thousand years.  Old Sarum was Keltic; it, saw the Romans and the Saxons through, and for a time it was a Norman city.  Now it is pasture for sheep.  Latest as yet is Salisbury,—­English, real English.  It may last a few centuries still.  It is little more than seven hundred years old.  But when I think of those great hangars back there by Stonehenge, I feel that the next phase is already beginning.  Of a world one will fly to the ends of, in a week or so.  Our world still.  Our people, your people and mine, who are going to take wing so soon now, were made in all these places.  We are visiting the old homes.  I am glad I came back to it just when you were doing the same thing.”