Twenty minutes later the Ruritanian was showing signs of physical
distress. We had established beyond a doubt that it was now impossible to obtain even the humblest meal ; and it was past the time at which it is legal to buy a drink. Hoping to soothe him, I pointed out a huddled group still waiting outside the theatre in the centre of the town.
" After all," I said, " we are not in such bad case as they, for the 'bus which (they were led to believe) would take them back to a neighbouring town immediately after the performance has not yet arrived and is not likely, they say, to do so, for another three-quarters of an hour."
" Merciful heavens ! " cried the Ruritanian, in a voice made thin and reedy by inanition. " And they will stand there, in the street, until it comes ? "
" It is nearly eleven o'clock," I replied, " and you have seen for yourself that there is nowhere in the town where they can go to sit and refresh themselves."
My friend shook his head sadly. " In truth," he said, " you are a most extraordinary race. You have the worst climate in Europe. Your amusements, which constitute the only spectacular feature of your national life, are to foreigners incomprehensible and often ridiculous. Your food is the worst I have ever eaten, and the laws and customs which govern its consumption are respectively humiliating and irrational. You subject the alien who enters your country to a series of indignities which only a state of emergency—war, for example—could justify. And yet you say to the world " Come and spend your holidays in Britain." Now, there seem to me three possible explanations of why you do this. Either (a) you do not believe that anyone will be fool enough to come, but feel that it is better to go through the motions of being hospitable than to maintain a churlish isolation. Or (b) you hope to implant in those who do come a healthy respect for, if not an absolute terror of, the English character, with its utter disregard for physical disComfort and its voluntary abnegation of the pleasures of liberty. Or else (c) you do it as a joke. Tell me, now, which of these three reasons is the right one ? "
My friend was looking at me in naïve enquiry. T11( Ruritanians, like all romantics, are very literal-minded. I made a quick. decision.
" We do it," I said firmly, " as a joke."
"h see;" said my-friend. He began; out of politeness, to laugh.
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