Nan spoke from a nest of half-a-dozen cushions heaped together beneath
the shade of a tree. Here she was lounging luxuriously, smoking
innumerable Turkish cigarettes, while Kitty swung tranquilly in a
hammock close by. Penelope had been invisible since lunch time. They
had all been down at Mallow the better part of a month, and she and
Ralph Fenton quite frequently absented themselves, "hovering," as Barry
explained, "on the verge of an engagement."

"My dear, the longer I stay in town, the more thoroughly I enjoy the
country when we come here. I get the quintessence of enjoyment by
treating Mallow as a liqueur."

Nan laughed. There was a faint flavour of bitterness in her laughter.

"Practically most of our good times in this world are only to be
obtained in the liqueur form. The gods don't make a habit of offering
you a big jug of enjoyment."

"If they did, you'd be certain to refuse it because you didn't like the
shape of the jug!" retorted Kitty.

Nan smiled whole-heartedly.

"What a miserable, carping, discontented creature I must be!"

"I'll swear that's not true!" An emphatic masculine voice intervened,
and round the corner of the clump of trees beneath which the two girls
had taken refuge, swung a man's tall, well-setup figure clad in
knickerbockers and a Norfolk coat.