The Weekly Fact had become, as people said, quite an interesting and readable paper, brighter than the Nation, more emotional than the New Statesman, gentler than the New Witness, spicier than the Spectator, more chatty than the Athenaeum, so that one bought it on bookstalls and read it in trains.

Under the hostess's direction they betook themselves via footpath and trail to a stone-walled pasture spicy with sweet fern.