"One is so dreadfully under everybody's eyes at Homburg. At least
you might give him a preliminary trial at Etretat."

"And be surrounded by Americans trying to talk French? No, thank
you. I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French.
What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English. To-
morrow at five you can bring your young friend to call on me."'

And Lucas, realizing that Susan Mebberley was a woman as well as
an aunt, saw that she would have to be allowed to have her own
way.

Adrian was duly carried abroad under the Mebberley wing; but as a
reluctant concession to sanity Homburg and other inconveniently
fashionable resorts were given a wide berth, and the Mebberley
establishment planted itself down in the best hotel at Dohledorf,
an Alpine townlet somewhere at the back of the Engadine. It was
the usual kind of resort, with the usual type of visitors, that
one finds over the greater part of Switzerland during the summer
season, but to Adrian it was all unusual. The mountain air, the
certainty of regular and abundant meals, and in particular the
social atmosphere, affected him much as the indiscriminating
fervour of a forcing-house might affect a weed that had strayed
within its limits. He had been brought up in a world where
breakages were regarded as crimes and expiated as such; it was
something new and altogether exhilarating to find that you were
considered rather amusing if you smashed things in the right
manner and at the recognized hours. Susan Mebberley had expressed
the intention of showing Adrian a bit of the world; the particular
bit of the world represented by Dohledorf began to be shown a good