towards the Leas.

"Goodness!" cried Gibberne, suddenly; "look there!"

He pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down the
air with wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionally
languid snail--was a bee.

And so we came out upon the Leas. There the thing seemed madder
than ever. The band was playing in the upper stand, though all
the sound it made for us was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of
prolonged last sigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow,
muffled ticking of some monstrous clock. Frozen people stood erect,
strange, silent, self-conscious-looking dummies hung unstably in
mid-stride, promenading upon the grass. I passed close to a little
poodle dog suspended in the act of leaping, and watched the slow
movement of his legs as he sank to earth. "Lord, look here!" cried
Gibberne, and we halted for a moment before a magnificent person
in white faint-striped flannels, white shoes, and a Panama hat,
who turned back to wink at two gaily dressed ladies he had passed.
A wink, studied with such leisurely deliberation as we could afford,
is an unattractive thing. It loses any quality of alert gaiety,
and one remarks that the winking eye does not completely close,
that under its drooping lid appears the lower edge of an eyeball
and a little line of white. "Heaven give me memory," said I,
"and I will never wink again."

"Or smile," said Gibberne, with his eye on the lady's answering teeth.

"It's infernally hot, somehow," said I. "Let's go slower."