What do you say to our going down and having a closer look at them? We might take a stroll as far as Howell Gruffydd's shop—I beg its pardon, Stores. Sit still a moment though; here's Minetta Garden behind us. She's been sketching the Dinas, very likely. Minetta very much wants to be an artist, and you meet her with her sketching things all over the place. It may or may not be a passing fancy; she certainly has what Raymond Briggs calls a "Rossetti head"—enormous dark eyes, sharpish jaw, straight dark hair, and a disconcerting way of staring at people who are "putting it on" a little more thickly than usual (she stares pretty frequently at Raymond himself). Ah, she's taking the steep way down. We'll take the other way....
Now we're on the level; better put your tie straight—or aren't you overpowered by these things? I confess I am; Raymond Briggs always chills me when he casts his eye over my front elevation. No thick-booted undergraduates' holiday-parties nor furry art-students with knickers and bare throats here. We're spruce at Llanyglo. Even on a week-day it's like a Church Parade, and on Sundays we go one better still. All the men have brightly coloured flannel blazers and gaudy cammerbands, and the women carry many-flounced parasols by a ring at the ferrule end, and wear toilettes straight out of the "Queen." Some of them will change for lunch; all of them will for table d'hôte at seven. They protest that they vastly prefer dinner at seven, but what with the servants' dinners at midday, and husbands who prefer the old-fashioned hour, and one thing and another, they take their principal meal at one. There's no reason they shouldn't. There's no reason they should mention it at all. But they do, every day. If you're introduced to them, they'll all have told you within twenty-four hours. It's as if they didn't want there to be any mistake about something or other....
Here's where the donkeys turn. They have red and white housings, and their names across their foreheads—"Tiny," "Prince," and so on; the donkey-rides are a little offshoot of Porth Neigr Omnibuses. Kite-flying's popular here too—that's Mr. Morrell's, the big star-shaped one. The bathing-tents and deck-chairs are mostly hired from Howell Gruffydd, but there are no boats yet except Percy Briggs's twenty-five-pound collapsible one; those who want to go fishing have to use one of those old Copley Fielding things by the jetty there.... Now we're coming to the people. Here's Raymond Briggs with Mr. Lacey, Raymond in his orange-and-black blazer and a white Homburg hat, Philip in a blue blazer with white braid and a plain straw hat; both with perfect creamy rippling white trousers and spotless white doeskin boots. They're talking off-handedly about other holiday-places—Norway, the Highlands, the Riviera—and they're afraid of showing any enthusiasm or delight. Of every place they know they say that it has "gone off" since they first went there. There's a subtle undercurrent of contest about their conversation. Philip was at Hyères as recently as last winter, looking at the violets; but Raymond has been three times to Arles and Nimes. I suppose honours are easy.
"Roman, I've heard?" Philip remarks. (You can hear him as you pass.)
"Yes, Roman, with a Saracenic tower."
"Ah, that tower's Saracenic, is it?"
"Saracenic."
"Wonderful people!"
"Indeed yes!"