Half a mile away the Poet and his sister sat on a boulder beside the road. It was a semi-public road winding around the foot of a wooded hill. Behind them, a mile away, was the railway station. That mile had been mostly uphill, and the Poet did not love physical exercise. He was tall and lean, with a geometrical figure composed mainly of acute angles. When in a state of repose, it resembled a carpenter’s pocket rule which protested at being entirely shut up. The Poet’s sister, on the contrary, was mainly curves—those delicate, subtle curves that deny the presence of bones, yet repel any suggestion of fat. She was young; not too young—just young enough to have won the crowning glory of spinsterhood. She had quantities of red hair, the kind of red hair that always goes with that astonishingly transparent skin underneath which scattering amber freckles come and go over-night. There was one now on the side of her nose, which had a becomingly mirthful tilt at the end. Her lips were full at the centre, carmine, and with finely shaped corners which could not by any possibility be drawn downward. She wore a solid pair of calfskin boots, with military heels which looked small while being ample in size. Her dark walking-skirt barely reached the interesting spot where her bootlaces were tied. Her waist, of a soft, cream-tinted material, left her neck and throat bare—for which the Lord be praised!—and a shapeless, yet shapely, fluffy white thing resting on the coils of her hair seemed to absorb warmth from them. In short, you will make no mistake when you keep your mind fixed on the Poet’s sister.
“Just around the next turn of the road, George,” she was saying, “our little summer Elysium will burst upon your view.”
The Poet mopped the long, solemn countenance that was belied by his eyes and his manner of speech.
“Galatea, I have observed that most things elysian in this life are generally just around the corner. I am not impatient. I can wait. In fact, I should prefer to have that first view burst upon me while I am comfortably seated in the spring wagon of—What did I understand you to say the gentleman’s name was, Galatea?”
“He is called Gabe.”
“Doubtless a corruption of Gabriel. I wonder if Gabriel blows his trumpet for breakfast?”
Galatea’s lips parted in a musical ripple of laughter. The sight would have caused a dentist to pass on, with misgivings about his future. The Poet merely remarked:—
“Galatea, are you sure we brought our toothbrushes?” Whereupon the dentist would have been heartened by the sight of a tiny point of gold shining out of the crown of her left bicuspid.
“George, you lazy thing, come on. It’s only half a mile further. Gabriel probably missed us at the station, and has returned by the main road.”
“Oh, well, if all roads lead to Elysium, I suppose it’s no use waiting here.”