“I’m glad you endorse our attitude. What we felt was that, although at present the Nudist Ramblers only ramble about over one or two strictly private estates the owners of which have granted their permission, it would not do to create confusion in the mind of the general public between nudists and some of our jolly young people who, revelling as they quite rightly should in their own youthful bodies, wear actually very little in the way of clothes. We did in fact have slight trouble a fortnight ago when two of our most energetic young lady members were asked by the Vicar of Bustard Abbas in Dorset to leave his church. Oh yes, he addressed them from the pulpit in the very coarsest biblical language … one would think a clergyman would know better in these days. But I always say if one wants to find old-fashioned bigotry one must look for it in church. The girls were lightly clad, yes. But for the Vicar to complain that his choir broke down in the middle of the Venite through staring at them when they came into the church was a reflection, had he stopped to reflect, not upon the poor girls, but upon the nasty minds of himself and his badly-trained choir. The whole business was most unpleasant. One old woman, an inmate of the Bustard Abbas almshouses, was seized with a form of hysterics and had to be led out of the church in convulsions of laughter, and according to the Vicar continued to laugh ungovernably at intervals for nearly a week, which seems to have exasperated one of the other almswomen into emptying a cup of tea over her. In fact Bustard Abbas appears to be one of those remote and peaceful country villages which is literally seething beneath the outwardly beautiful surface with the rankest and basest animal passions. You’ll pardon my strong language, Lord Buntingdon, I hope? And, dear me, I’m wandering from the real question at issue. This degraded mediæval superstition which still lingers always rouses my ire.”

“Come along, we’ll go into the library and have our coffee,” said Lord Buntingdon soothingly. “But I’m glad you choked off those nudists. A bachelor’s state may be blessed, but we can’t be too careful, and I don’t want to be associated with nudists. Anyway, I don’t like ’em. I came upon a colony of them once in Germany, skating. It was a most unpleasant sight. They looked like chilled meat.”

In the library Mr Sydney Prew returned to the subject which had brought him to Ouse Hall.

“Of course, it was open to me to take out a summons for assault and battery against Ben Nevis.”

“Against Ben Nevis?” Lord Buntingdon gasped, his oval brow suffering another ellipse.

“That is what they call this Mr MacDonald in Inverness-shire.”

“A nickname, do you mean?”

“No, he is known as MacDonald of Ben Nevis.”