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companion was apparently deep in a glossy magazine. Then she sat down, but only on the edge of the chair, remaining poised, as it were, for instant flight.
    "The fish certainly have it all their own way," she admitted. "I'm Roberta Symes, by the way."
    "And I'm Gianetta Brooke. I take it you don't fish?"
    "No. We're walking, Marion and I—that's Marion Bradford, over there. We're together. At least, we're climbing, sort of."
    "What d'you mean by sort of?" I asked, amused. The Skye hills had not struck me as being the kind you could sort of climb.
    "Well, Marion's a climber, and I'm not. That's really what I mean. So we go scrambling, which is a kind of halfway solution." She looked at me ingenuously. "But I'm dying to learn. I'd like to be as good as Mr.
    Beagle, and climb on every single Cuillin in turn, including the Inaccessible Pinnacle!"
    "A thoroughly unworthy ambition," said a voice above us. Roderick Grant had come across, and was standing over us, coffee cup in hand.
    Roberta's eves widened. "Unworthy? That from you). Why, Mr. Grant?"
    He turned and, with a sweep of one arm, indicated the prospect from the lounge windows.
    "Look at them," he said. "Look at them. Thirty million years ago they thrust their way up from God knows where, to be blasted by wind and ice and storm, and chiseled into the mountain shapes you walk over today.
    They've been there countless ages, the same rocks, standing over the same ocean, worn by the same winds. And you, who've lived out a puny little twenty or thereabouts, talk of scaling them as if they were—"
    "Teeth?" said Roberta, and giggled. "I know what you mean, though. They do make one feel a bit impermanent, don't they? But then it's all the more of a challenge, don't you feel? Mere man, or worse still mere woman, conquering the—the giants of time, climbing up—"
    "Everest!" Colonel Cowdray-Simpson's exclamation came so pat that I jumped, and Roberta giggled again.
    The Colonel peered over it at Nicholas, who was nearest the radio. "Turn on the wireless, will you, Drury?
    Let's hear how they're getting on."
    Nicholas obeyed. The news was nearly over. We had luckily missed the conferences, the strikes, the newest
    atomic developments, the latest rumors from the U.S.S.R., and had come in just in time for a fuss about the seating in Westminster Abbey, a description of the arches in the Mall, and a hint of the general excitement in a London seething already towards its Coronation boiling point three days hence. And nothing yet, apparently, about Everest
    Nicholas switched off.
    "But I think they're going to make it," he said.
    "It's too thrilling, isn't it?" said Marcia comfortably.
    "It's certainly a magnificent effort," said Colonel Cowdray-Simpson. "They deserve their luck. What d'ye say, Beagle? What are the chances with the weather?"
    "Fair enough." Beagle looked faintly uncomfortable at being thus appealed to in public. I remembered, with a quickening of interest, that this unassuming little man had been involved in an earlier attempt on Everest. But he seemed unwilling to pursue the subject. He groped in his jacket pocket and produced his pipe, turning the conversation abruptly. "I'd say they had a chance of better weather there than we have here, at any rate. I don't like the look of the sky. There's rain there."
    "All the better for the fishing," said Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson placidly, but Roberta moaned.
    "Oh no\ And I wanted to start really climbing tomorrow."
    "Quite determined to conquer the Cuillin, then?" said Roderick Grant. "Quite!"
    "Where d'you intend to start?"
    "I don't know. I'm leaving that to Marion."
    "Garsven's not hard," said someone—I think it was Alma Corrigan. "There's a way up from the Coruisk end—"
    Marion Bradford interrupted: "The best first climbs are Bruach na Frithe and Sgurr na Banachdich, but they're too far away. Garsven is within reach, but of course it's just plain dull." Her flat voice and uncompromising manner fell hardly short, 1