"You see, the Cape has everything," Peggy said with the air of a showman, "salt-water ponds, and fresh-water ponds, and hills and woods and sand-dunes. If you want a walk through the pines to a leafy glade, walk this way, ladies and gentlemen. If you want rocks and breakwaters and sand-dunes and inlets, look out of the car on the other side. Every town has at least two or three of the oldest windmills on Cape Cod, and dancing pavilions and moving-picture palaces stare at us from every side, without in the least interfering with the general panorama."
"Don't you think you have talked enough, Peggy?" Ruth suggested.
"No, I honestly don't, but perhaps Mr. Chambers does."
"This is Miss Ruth's party," Mr. Chambers smiled diplomatically. "This country makes me think of English country, in one way," he added, smoothly. "It is, of course, altogether different, but in England, especially in the north, you get a varied landscape in a limited area, as you do here. This is the only place in the states where you find just that."
"The Cape is only eight miles across at its widest point," Ruth said, "and of course the whole scenic effect is miniature in proportion. We'll begin to see the sea on both sides of us presently."
"What amuses me is the way the townships are cut up; a township of fifteen hundred people is cut into almost what you might call house lots. North, South, East, West Harwich, Harwich Port, Harwich Centre, and it doesn't take ten minutes to run through any one of these little villages, and get into the next."
"They are all very attractive," Elizabeth said, defensively, but not very loudly.
"I'd like to show you England," Mr. Chambers continued, in a lowered voice. "I think you'd like it over there, say in a year or two, after the children begin to get back their rosy cheeks again, and the gardens are flourishing a bit more. The war has left it all a bit ragged."
"It hasn't left you ragged," Elizabeth thought. "It's only left you fatter and complacenter and richer. I wish Buddy had a million."
"You look like a snow maiden in those white clothes," Piggy Chambers was saying to Ruth.