Out of the window I saw Yarborough crossing the lawn with a tray of tall frosted mint juleps and put them down on the white wrought iron table under the huge green and white umbrella. Natalie Lane under the mimosa tree stirred herself, and Mr. Fellowes Dunthorne on the float sat up, touched his red legs and redder shoulders experimentally, as one does a cake to see if it’s done, got up, straightened his back tentatively and bent over, and for the next few moments went through a lovely pantomime of a man who’d lain not wisely but much too well in the sun. I realized without shame that I was grinning like an ape. Nothing that I know of makes a guest—male or female—quite as unpopular in any country house as a severe case of sunburn . . . except possibly getting, and giving everybody else, the
