She was indignant, said she should prefer to go alone to having unsympathetic and uninformed society; reminded me of the histories of nations that had been found embedded in brick walls, waxed eloquent on the subject of the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Rosetta Stone, skipped lightly from the pointed apex of the Pyramids to the significance of the flat roofs of Thibet, examined the walls of the buried cities in central Asia, and before I had fully realised that I was really travelling in the East, I found that she was examining the designs on the Aztec pottery of ancient Mexico.
Fearing that we should have this sort of thing straight on end for a week, I said we would go next day, weather permitting, if only she would help me decide whether to have the omelette plain, or a cheese omelette, or would they prefer macaroni cheese? I have found in the past that the crystallisation of thought necessary to follow Virginia, when she is in an informing mood, creates a vacuum, and then I get a cold in my head.
I also inquired whether she would prefer to drive all the way, or go by train.
She replied, still with her eyes glued to the interesting newspaper treatise on antiquarian relics, that she would rather I settled these minor details, adding that she always liked to leave the arrangement of everything to me, as it gave her such opportunities to point out to me the feebleness of my methods and ideas.
I decided to go with her, simply because I knew that unless she had some firm, restraining force beside her, she would go and buy that Roman viaduct, amphitheatre, or villa, and order it to be sent home; and, for all I knew, she might give my address in a fit of wandering-mindedness, and what should I do with it when it arrived? You can’t pack an amphitheatre away in the empty pigsty, and all the other space was occupied with seedlings and things!
Besides, she has no bump of locality (neither have I, for the matter of that); but I thought it would look better if two of us were arrested for wandering about without any visible means of subsistence; at least, I could say I was her keeper.
Next morning we inquired of the barometer as to the weather prospects. By the way, that barometer is a unique treasure. V. and U. gave it to me one birthday; I had long been craving one that was a genuine antique. There was no doubt about this one—its antiquity, I mean; for the rest, until you get on speaking terms with it, I admit that it does seem a trifle ambiguous.
But I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I’ll say no more on this point, save that we tapped it vigorously; whereupon the long hand flew wildly round and round one way, while the short hand did a whirligig, equally excitedly, in the opposite direction.
We waited till they both got tired of spinning round, and then, as the long hand pointed to “Much Rain,” with leanings towards “Stormy,” we knew we could rely on a very fine day.