The lady made it clear that she was there to see all she could. She radiated her appetite to see. He carried a fur stole for her over his arm and flicked the way up the hill. Flip, flap, flop. She followed demurely.
“This is the only view I care to show you now,” he said at the crest. “There was a better one beyond there. But—it has been defiled.... Those hills!... I knew you would like them. The space of it! And yet——. This view—lacks the shining ponds. There are wonderful distant ponds. After all I must show you the other! But you see there is the high-road, and the high-road has produced an abomination. Along here we go. Now. Don’t look down please.” His gesture covered the foreground. “Look right over the nearer things into the distance. There!”
The lady regarded the wide view with serene appreciation. “I don’t see,” she said, “that it’s in any way ruined. It’s perfect.”
“You don’t see! Ah! you look right over. You look high. I wish I could too. But that screaming board! I wish the man’s crusts would choke him.”
And indeed quite close at hand, where the road curved about below them, the statement that Staminal Bread, the True Staff of Life, was sold only by the International Bread Shops, was flung out with a vigour of yellow and Prussian blue that made the landscape tame.
His finger directed her questioning eye.
“Oh!” said the lady suddenly, as one who is convicted of a stupidity and coloured slightly.
“In the morning of course it is worse. The sun comes directly on to it. Then really and truly it blots out everything.”
The lady stood quite silent for a little time, with her eyes on the distant ponds. Then he perceived that she was blushing. She turned to her interlocutor as a puzzled pupil might turn to a teacher.
“It really is very good bread,” she said. “They make it——Oh! most carefully. With the germ in. And one has to tell people.”