"I'm not fretting. Will you have your hair done up?" he asked, lifting the long plait.
"Well, of course I shall, and waved, and that."
"Gladys, they'll spoil you."
The conversation went on in this strain for some time. She alternately repeated the exclamation, "How you do go on!" or accused him of the mysterious crime of being a caution, but she never stopped looking perfectly beautiful and seraphic.
When they went back to the garden a few other visitors had straggled in. They all seemed to come in high dog-carts, and they always ordered eggs, jam, and watercress with their tea, and were immensely impressed by the Persian pheasants.
Vaughan went back to London feeling refreshed, and already, strangely, counting the days till he could come back.
There was not a woman in the world he knew whom he would have taken the slightest trouble to see except Gladys, the innkeeper's daughter. She was an illiterate schoolgirl; and though she had a lovely face, she was stupid, and probably not so angelic as she looked; but he always felt a little disappointed as he drove back. He wished she were in love with him.
And this ungratified wish was, in all his full life with its brilliant success, perhaps his greatest real pleasure.