“That,” remarked one of the week-end visitors as the discomfited party shook the Magistrate’s dust off their feet, “that seems a futile old gentleman!”
This week-end visitor had an emphatic manner of speech, which afforded the only relief in the exasperation of the atmosphere.
However, the affair managed to straighten itself out on, again, true Gilbertian lines. Mrs. Mutton duly found a motor-bus to convey her to Paddockstown; and there, with all the proper formality, interviewed the Magistrate and a lawyer, with the help of whom she was separated from her obstreperous Mutton. Little Jimmy gave evidence, Mutton was advised by his lawyer not to defend the case. She has now appropriately joined forces with Mrs. Caliban and is enjoying a time of peace which we trust may not be merely an interlude.
“Oh, Miss!” she cried, describing these unwonted sensations, “I’m that overjoiced, I’m afraid it’s hardly right!”
As the husband is hovering about the roads, waylaying all concerned with alarming politeness, we are a little anxious. We know that he is still mouton enragé at heart; and we do not know if in spite of the mandate from Paddockstown the local police would be allowed to interfere were gun or table knife to be put into requisition.
The Dorothy Perkins are coming out, showing a most glorious kind of fire rose, which hitherto they only displayed in the autumn after a touch of frost. Combined with the delicate sprays of the Ceanothus Gloire de Versailles, they make in a tall glass vase as pretty a harmony as we know.
THE NEW ROSARY
The new Rose Garden promises complete success. Caroline Testout is coming out, fat and pink and smiling in her usual good-humoured profusion. We have a great bed in the shape of a Maltese cross in the middle of a stretch of turf in this new Rose Garden, and the other three beds are filled respectively with Madame Abel Châtenay; mixed yellow roses, among which are Betty, Lady Hillingdon, and Juliet, are specially successful; and another deep pink charmer named Madame Jules Groles. She has not yet come out. The centre bed is devoted to General MacArthur, with a Crimson Rambler pillar.
The Climbing Roses against the arches that bound this rose-lawn north and south are growing bravely; and we have lost our hearts to May Queen with its mass of bright pink flowers, which, combined with the fainter, creamier pinks of Paul Transon, make such a delicious bouquet of bloom, all on the same pillar.