An hour later Adèle and Nobby and I were all in the Rolls, sailing along the soft brown roads en route for Fallow Hill.
It was a day of great loveliness, and the forest ways were one and all beset with a rare glory.
Thirty-six hours before, the first frost of autumn had touched the breast of Earth with silver finger-tips. 'Twas but a runaway knock. The mischief-loving knave was gone again, before the bustling dame had braced herself to open to her pert visitor. Maybe the rogue was beating up his quarters. The time of his dreaded lodgment was not yet. His apprehensive hostess was full of smiles. Summer was staying on....
Yet on the livery of the countryside the accolade of Frost had wrought a wonder. Two days ago the world was green. To-day a million leaves glanced, green as before, yet with a new-found lustre—something of red in it, something of gold, something of sober brown. But the wonder was not to the trees. It was the humble bracken that had been dubbed knight. The homespun of the forest was become cloth of pure gold, glittering, flawless. In the twinkling of an eye the change had come. Here was an acre spread with the delicate fronds, and there a ragged mile, and yonder but shreds and patches—yet all of magic gold, flinging the sunlight back, lighting the shadows, making the humblest ride too rich for kings to trample till the green roofs and walls looked dull beside it, and the ephemeral magnificence took Memory by the throat and wrung a lease of life from that Reversioner.
"Tell me," I said, "of Mr. Bason. He interests me, and I've never seen him."
"Mr. Bason," said Adèle, "is short and fat and—yes, I'm afraid he's greasy. He has bright yellow hair and a ridiculous moustache, which is brushed up on end on each side of his nostrils. He has very watery pale blue eyes, and all the blood in his face seems to have gone to his nose."
"Muscular rheumatism," I suggested.
"I guess so. Of course, he knows best, and I don't pretend to say what men should wear, but white flannel suits aren't becoming to every figure, are they? Most of the rest of him was mauve—shirt, socks and handkerchief. Oh, and he had a tie on his pin."
"But how lovely!"
"Yes, but you should have smelt the lilac. He was just perfumed to death. If he isn't careful, one of these days he'll get picked."