The weather in London this year was, contrary to the habit of June, extraordinarily hot, and Hugh made use of it a day or two later, with tact that for a mere man showed signs of invisibility. He and Edith returning home from a concert had been put down in the Park, to walk up the shaded alley by the ladies’ mile, and be waited for at the end by their carriage. The rhododendrons were in full flower, making up for fifty weeks sombreness of foliage by the incredible brilliance of their brief blossoming, and the trees were pyramids of pink and red blossoms. The herbaceous bed, too, at the corner of the Serpentine was a flaming mass of colour, and Hugh saw his opportunity.
“Oh! it’s all very well to say that it is a beautiful bed,” he said in answer to Edith’s commendation, “but it’s all out of place. All gardens and flowers are out of place in London; and if I was the Commissioner for gardening, or whoever does it, I should have made numbers of tin flowers, brilliantly painted, so that you could wash and dust them.”
“Then you would show execrable taste,” said his wife. “Why, it is just the fact that you can turn out of Piccadilly and in a moment be in this beautiful garden that makes London so perfect.”
“I don’t think it’s perfect at all,” said he. “Why, when I looked at that bed the other day, I positively felt home-sick. I don’t now because you are here, but alone it made me feel home-sick. One ought never to come into the Park, if one is living in town.”
Edith transferred her eyes from the bed to his face.
“Now we’re going to play the truth game, two questions each,” she said; “and I’ll begin.”
“Oh, we always toss!” said Hugh, really invisibly tactful.
“Well, we are not going to. Question one: Would you like to go down to Mannington?”
“Yes.”
“Then, dear, why didn’t you say so?”