Bobby Trench had been hardly less free of criticism on his own account. Kencote was a cemetery of the dead, a little bit of Hampstead stuck down ten miles from nowhere, which came to the same thing; its owner was an old clodhopper. Never again would he permit himself to be inveigled into paying such a visit.
Yet here he was, advancing across the turf to where the tea-table was spread in the shade of a great cedar, with an ingratiating smile on his face, and apparently no doubt of the prospective warmth of his welcome.
"How do you do, Mrs. Clinton? Years since I saw you. How do you do, Mr. Clinton? You don't look a day older. The governor sent you messages, in case I should be lucky enough to see you. We are all at Brummels for the week-end. I started at ten this morning; made about a hundred miles of it; lunched at Bathgate. By Jove, you live in a past century here! Wonderful peaceful country, but a bit dull, eh?"
The Squire had somewhat recovered from his surprise during this speech, and was prepared to abide by his principles of hospitality, in spite of his distaste for Bobby Trench, and all he represented. But the last comment aroused his resentment, and emphasised the distance that lay between him and this glib young man.
"We don't find it dull," he said; "but I dare say people who spend their lives rushing about from one place to another and never settling to anything might. They are welcome to their tastes, but the less I have to do with them the better I'm pleased."
Bobby Trench laughed good-humouredly. "Well, it's true we are rather a rackety lot nowadays," he said. "I don't know that you haven't got the best of it, after all. I sometimes think I shouldn't mind settling down in the country myself, and doing a bit of gardening. We've started gardening at Brummels. We quarrel like anything about it; it's the greatest sport. You don't go in for it here, I see. But it's a jolly place. You've got lots of opportunities."
The Squire found himself fast losing patience. It was true that he did not go in for gardening, in the modern way, judging that pursuit to be more fitted for the women of the family. Mrs. Clinton had her Spring garden, in which she was allowed to have her own way, within limits, in the matter of designing patterns of bright-coloured flowers; and she was also allowed a say in the arrangement of the summer bedding, as long as she did not interfere too much with the ideas of the head gardener. But as for altering anything on a large scale, or even additional planting of anything more permanent than spring or summer flowers, that was not to be heard of.
And yet the Squire did love his garden, as he loved everything else about his home. He knew every tree and every shrub in it, and was immensely proud of the few rarities which every old garden that has at some time or other been in possession of an owner who has taken a living interest in it possesses. He knew nothing of the modern nurseryman's catalogue, but would gratefully accept a cutting or a root of something he admired from somebody else's garden, and see that it was brought on well and planted in the right place. He belonged to the days of Will Wimble, who was pleased "to carry a tulip-root in his pocket from one to another, or exchange a puppy between a couple of friends that lived perhaps on the opposite sides of the county"; and who shall say that that intimate sort of knowledge of an old-established garden gives less pleasure than the constant changes which modern gardening involves? If his great grandfather, who had called in an eighteenth century innovator to sweep away the old formal gardens of the Elizabethan Kencote, and lay the ground they covered all out afresh, had stayed his hand in the same way, he would have done a good deal better.
The Squire swallowed a cup of tea and rose from his seat. "Well, I have a great deal of work to get through," he said, "so I'll ask you to excuse me. Remember me to your father. It's years since we met, but we were a good deal together as young fellows."
He held out his hand. It was as near a dismissal as he could bring himself to utter under the circumstances. He would have liked to be in a position to tell Bobby Trench that he did not want him at Kencote, and the sooner he went the better; but he could not very well put his meaning into words.