It was a common saying that in her large good-nature she amused people regardless of their own expense.
She would light-heartedly make town-bred folk walk twenty miles or bear the toil of infinite drives.

But this was after lunch; before, her guests might do as they pleased.

Lord Manorwater went off to see some tenant; Arthur, after vain efforts to decoy Alice into a fishing expedition, went down the stream in a canoe, because to his fool's head it seemed the riskiest means of passing the time at his disposal; Bertha and her sister were writing letters; the spectacled people had settled themselves below shady trees with voluminous papers and a pile of books.
Alice alone was idle.

She made futile expeditions to the library, and returned with an armful of volumes which she knew in her heart she would never open.

She found the deepest and most comfortable chair and placed it in a shady place among beeches.