And that was why we didn’t discover until some time afterward that we had taken the wrong road across the fields; and that, as we imagined our faces turned toward it, Anne Hathaway’s cottage was getting further and further away to our left.
To be in London is to be in Society. Each invitation accepted brings two more, with an ultimate result like that of the old-fashioned “chain letter.”
Having thoughtlessly begun a social career, I suddenly found my London carpeted with crimson velvet. And by insidious processes, and by reason of the advance of summer, the velvet carpet magically transformed itself into country-house lawns, the only difference being that the green velvet carpet was of a richer pile.
I had determined to accept no country-house invitations. The somewhat ample length and breadth of London itself was all the England I desired, and this I absorbed as fast as I could; my only difficulty being that I could not live nimbly enough.
But, like the historic gentleman who “loved but was lured away,” I was invited to a Saturday afternoon garden party in the country, and, under pressure of argument by some cherished friends, I consented to go.
The Garden Party, unlike Sheridan, was seventy miles away; but I learned that it would be a typical English Garden Party of the three-volume sort, and though it necessitated a week-end stay, and concomitant luggage bothers, I stoically prepared to see it through.
I was to meet my cherished friends, who were none other than the Wag O’ The World and his Wife, at Victoria Station.