Then he resumed his penetrating criticism of the caravan outfit.
“That boy,” he said suddenly with his glasses oblique, “hasn’t taken off his collar yet.”
Bealby revealed the modest secrets of his neck and pocketed the collar....
Mr. Geedge did not appear to observe Bealby. He was a man of the super-aquiline type with a nose like a rudder, he held his face as if it was a hatchet in a procession, and walked with the dignity of a man of honour. You could see at once he was a man of honour. Inflexibly, invincibly, he was a man of honour. You felt that anywhen, in a fire, in an earthquake, in a railway accident when other people would be running about and doing things he would have remained—a man of honour. It was his pride rather than his vanity to be mistaken for Sir Edward Grey. He now walked along with Miss Philips and his wife behind the disputing Bowleses, and discoursed in deep sonorous tones about the healthiness of healthy places and the stifling feeling one had in towns when there was no air.
§ 4
The Professor was remarkably active when at last the point he had chosen for the encampment was reached. Bealby was told to “look alive” twice, and William was assigned to his genus and species; “The man’s an absolute idiot,” was the way the Professor put it. William just shot a glance at him over his nose. The place certainly commanded a wonderful view. It was a turfy bank protected from the north and south by bushes of yew and the beech-bordered edge of a chalk pit; it was close beside the road, a road which went steeply down the hill into Winthorpe-Sutbury, with that intrepid decision peculiar to the hill-roads of the south of England. It looked indeed as though you could throw the rinse of your teacups into the Winthorpe-Sutbury street; as if you could jump and impale yourself upon the church spire. The hills bellied out east and west and carried hangers, and then swept round to the west in a long level succession of projections, a perspective that merged at last with the general horizon of hilly bluenesses, amidst which Professor Bowles insisted upon a “sapphire glimpse” of sea. “The Channel,” said Professor Bowles, as though that made it easier for them. Only Mr. Geedge refused to see even that mitigated version of the sea. There was something perhaps bluish and level, but he was evidently not going to admit it was sea until he had paddled in it and tested it in every way known to him....
“Good Lord!” cried the Professor. “What’s the man doing now?”
William stopped the struggles and confidential discouragements he was bestowing upon the white horse and waited for a more definite reproach.
“Putting the caravan alongside to the sun! Do you think it will ever get cool again? And think of the blaze of the sunset—through the glass of that door!”
William spluttered. “If I put’n tother way—goo runnin’ down t’hill like,” said William.