“I don’t think I care much for this country of yours,” said Michael at last. “It’s flat and cold and damp. Why on earth you ever thought I should care to live here, I don’t know.”
“There’s a wood about a quarter of a mile farther on. We can get out of the wind there.”
Michael resented Stella’s pleasantness. He wanted her to be angry and so launch him easily upon the grievances he had been storing up for a fortnight.
“I hate badly trained dogs,” he grumbled when Stella turned round to whistle vainly for one of the spaniels.
“So do I,” she agreed.
It was really unfair of her to effect a deadlock by being perpetually and unexpectedly polite. He would try being gracious himself: it was easier in the shelter of the wood.
“I don’t think I’ve properly thanked you for having us to stay down here,” he began.
Stella stopped dead in the middle of the glade:
“Look here, do you want me to talk about this business?” she demanded.
Her use of the word “business” annoyed him: it crystallized all the offensiveness, as he was now calling it to himself, of her sisterly attitude these two weeks.