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 _à 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