It didn't feel to me like the open air at all," said the Terror firmly.
"But it is the open air," said the princess.
They came out of the narrow path they had been following into a broader one, and presently they turned aside from that at the foot of a steep and pathless bank.

The Twins started up it as if it were neither here nor there to them; as, indeed, it was not.
But the princess stopped short, and said in a tone of dismay: "Am I to climb this ?" The Terror stopped, looked at her dismayed face, set his bicycle against the trunk of a tree, and said: "I'll help you up." With that, dismissing etiquette from his mind, he slipped his arm round the slender waist of the princess, and firmly hauled her to the top of the bank.

He relieved her of most of the effort needed to mount it; but none the less she reached the top panting a little.
"You certainly aren't in very good training," he said rather sadly.
"Training?
What is training ?" said the princess.
"It's being fit," said Erebus in a faintly superior tone.
"And what is being fit ?" said the princess.
"It's being strong--and well--and able to run miles and miles," said Erebus raising her voice to make her meaning clearer.
"You needn't shout at her," said the Terror.
"I'm trying to make her understand," said Erebus firmly.
"But I do understand--when it is not the slang you are using.

I know English quite well," said the princess.
"You certainly speak it awfully well," said the Terror politely.
He went down the bank and hauled up his bicycle.

They went a little deeper into the wood and reached their goal, the banks of a small pool.
They sat down in a row, and the princess looked at its cool water, in the cool green shade of the tall trees, with refreshed eyes.
"This _is_ different," she said with a faint little sigh of pleasure.
[Illustration: "This is different," she said.] "Yes; this is the real open air," said the Terror.
"But I do get lots of open air," protested the princess.