But how could Minta say now that she would not have him? Not if she agreed to spend whole afternoons trapesing about the country alone⁠—for Andrew would be off after his crabs⁠—but possibly Nancy was with them. She tried to recall the sight of them standing at the hall door after lunch. There they stood, looking at the sky, wondering about the weather, and she had said, thinking partly to cover their shyness, partly to encourage them to be off (for her sympathies were with Paul),

“There isn’t a cloud anywhere within miles,” at which she could feel little Charles Tansley, who had followed them out, snigger. But she did it on purpose. Whether Nancy was there or not, she could not be certain, looking from one to the other in her mind’s eye.

She read on: “ ‘Ah, wife,’ said the man, ‘why should we be King? I do not want to be King.’ ‘Well,’ said the wife, ‘if you won’t be King, I will; go to the Flounder, for I will be King.’ ”