"Oh, but we must," said Jill.
"My dear, I'm not going out in this sort of weather without Sjvensen, and he may be too busy to leave town. Besides, the blubber hasn't come yet."
"Couldn't we get hold of Wenceslas?" said I. "He's getting five million a week at the Palliseum. Makes footprints there twice daily in real snow. The audience are invited to come and tread in them. They do, too, like anything. Happily, Wenceslas is famed for the size of his feet. But you can't expect a man to leave—"
"But it can't go on like this," said Daphne.
"My dear, English weather is like your dear self—capable of anything. Be thankful that we have only snow."
"If it occurred to it to rain icebergs, so that we were compelled willy or even nilly to give up sleeping out of doors, it would do so. Well, I'm tired. What about turning out, eh? Light the lanthorn, Jonah, and give me my dressing-gown."
"If you want to make me really ill," said Daphne, "you'll go on talking about bathing and sleeping out of doors."
Berry laughed a fat laugh. "My dear," he explained, "I was only joking."
We were all housed together in an old, old country inn, the inn of Fallow, which village lies sleeping at the foot of the Cotswold Hills. We knew the place well. Few stones of it had been set one upon the other less than three hundred years ago, and, summer and winter alike, it was a spot of great beauty comparatively little known, too, and far enough from London to escape most tourists. The inn itself had sheltered Cromwell, and before his time better men than he had warmed themselves at the great hearth round which we sat. For all that, he had given his name to the panelled room. Our bedrooms were as old, low-pitched and full of beams. The stairs also were a great glory. In fact, the house was in its way unique. A discreet decorator, too, had made it comfortable. Save in the Cromwell room, electric light was everywhere. And in the morning chambermaids led you by crooked passages over uneven doors to white bathrooms. It was all right.
Hither we had come to spend Christmas and the New Year. By day we walked for miles over the Cotswolds, or took the car and looked up friends who were keeping Christmas in the country, not too many miles away. The Dales of Stoy had been kind, and before the frost came I had had two days' hunting with the Heythrop. And to-morrow was New Year's Eve. Four miles the other side of the old market town of Steeple Abbas, and twenty-one miles from Pallow, stood Bill Manor, where the Hathaways lived. This good man and his wife Milly were among our greatest friends, and they had wanted us to spend Christmas with them. Though we had not done so, we had motored over several times and they had lunched with us at Fallow only the day before. And for New Year's Eve the Hathaways had arranged a small but very special ball, to which, of course, we were bidden. Indeed, I think the ball was more for us than for anyone else. Anyway, Jim and Milly said so. The idea was that we should come over in the car in time for dinner with the house-party, the ball would begin about ten, and when it was over, we should return to Fallow in the ordinary way. Nobody had anticipated such heavy weather.