I suppose I ought not to have noticed even that? And, of course, according to my upbringing, I ought certainly not to have noticed him now. I ought to have fixed a silent, Medusa-like glare upon the trellis. I ought then to have taken my battered little green watering-can to fill it for the fourteenth time at the scullery-tap. Then I ought to have begun watering the Shirley poppies on the other side of the garden.
But how often the way one's been brought up contradicts what one feels like doing! And alas! How very often the second factor wins the day!
It won the evening, that time.
I said: "Good evening."
And I thought that would be the end of it, but no.
The frank and boyish voice (quite as nice a voice as my soldier-brother Reggie's, far away in India!) took up quite quickly and eagerly: "Er—I say, isn't it rather a long job watering the garden that way?"
It was, of course. But we couldn't afford a hose. Why, they cost about thirty shillings.
He said: "Do have the 'lend' of our hose to do the rest of them, won't you?" And thereupon he stretched out a long, white-sleeved arm over the railings and put the end of the hose straight into my hand.
"Oh, thank you; but I will not trouble you. Good evening."
Of course, that would have been the thing to say, icily, before I walked off.