Really, it would do Kate good to discover that Marion liked to please herself once in a while.
Which was all very well for Marion Rose, but rather hard on Jack, who was not in a mood for company.

He smoked hopefully for a half hour or so.

Most tourists got enough of it in a half hour.

They began to feel the altitude then, or found the wind disagreeable, or they were in a hurry to climb down to the lake and fish, or they had to think about the trip home.

Besides, their vocabularies were generally exhausted in half an hour, and without superlatives they could not gaze upon the "view"; not with any satisfaction, that is.