"Boy!"
"Yes, dear?"
"D'you think you could…?"
By the time I had torn my trousers, strained my right shoulder, sworn three times, and ruined the appearance of my favourite brogues, the others were out of sight.
"Thanks awfully, Boy. You are good to me. And that'll look lovely in the drawing-room. The worst of it is, this stuff wilts almost at once."
"Seems almost a shame to have picked it," I said grimly, "doesn't it?"
"It does really," Jill agreed. "Never mind," she added cheerfully, slipping an arm through mine. "It was my fault."
Subduing a desire to lie down on my back and scream, I relighted my pipe, and we strolled forward.
A country walk with Jill is never dull.
To do the thing comfortably, you should be followed by a file of pioneers in marching order, a limbered waggon, and a portable pond. Before we had covered another two hundred yards, I had collected three more sprays, two ferns, and a square foot of moss—the latter, much to the irritation of its inhabitants, many of whom refused to evacuate their homes and therefore accompanied us. I drew the line at frogs, on the score of cruelty to animals, but when we met one about the size of a postage stamp, it was a very near thing. Finally, against my advice, my cousin stormed a bank, caught her foot in an invisible wire, and fell flat upon her face.