CHAPTER FIVE
TRIALS OF AN ARTISTMore than half the party were either shooting or lunching with the guns, so lunch was in the small dining-room at a round table. Alice was between Professor Milward and the archdeacon and would willingly have changed places with the lowest scullery maid. It turned out, however, that the archdeacon knew her father, who had modernised the interior of the Rectory at Plumstead Episcopi, while Professor Milward, being used to young women at Oxford and much preferring them uneducated, talked to Alice very amusingly about nothing, till her spirits rose and she was able to say no thank you to the wine, which on the previous evening she had been afraid to refuse, though she didn’t drink it. Sally, deep in dogs with Lady Pomfret and the diplomat, cast an approving gl
