116 STRAY -AW AYS 



our first dinner-party my cousin breakfasted on 

 effervescing caffeine and lavender salts, and was not 

 seen till eleven o'clock frokost, when she toyed with 

 something kippered, with wan and exaggerated cheer- 

 fulness. Half an hour afterwards we were out in 

 the wind again — a wind that made our clothes bear 

 the same relation to our bodies that the flag does 

 to the flagstaff in half a gale, and it may be added 

 that the flag was generally half-mast high. The 

 beach seemed immeasurably long and desert-like as 

 we strolled along it through coarse, sparse grass and 

 powdery sand, with the wind humming in our ears, 

 and the sun staring in a pale blue sky. The only sign 

 of life was a flock of geese putting forth to sea with the 

 pomp of a Viking fleet ; the waves rocked and lifted 

 them with an infant enthusiasm that seemed beneath 

 the dignity of the Baltic. The wind was doing what it 

 could to rouse the sea to a sense of its importance, 

 but succeeded only in rousing the temper of my second 

 cousin in exact proportion to my skirts, while she 

 endeavoured to kodak me and the beach. I will 

 only add that I have heard much of instantaneous 

 photography and snapshots, but have not found 

 anything instantaneous about the sufferings of the 

 photographer's victim. 



We were presently taken by our hostess to a maierei, 

 one of the great dairy farms that make the face of 

 Denmark drowsy with the lethargy of grazing cattle, 

 and fill the heart of the English housekeeper with 

 questioning as to the merits of Danish butter. Scud- 

 ding before the breeze we passed through the village 

 of Hou and the waving skirts of a beech-wood, past a 

 ploughing-team ruling lines of brown across a boundless 

 tract of green, trenches where a fir-wood was to be 

 planted, and finally found a long, red -brick house, a 

 green garden full of fruit trees, and a village of sheds 



