“Certainly.”
“Well, it was because I thought you were enjoying yourself so much, and wanted to stop here.”
Hugh nodded with moral purpose at her, as people nod at children.
“Then I hope this will be a lesson to you,” he said.
Here a man with a leather bag slung round his neck and a book of tickets came up and demanded twopence because they had sat on two green chairs. Hugh searched his pockets in vain for any coin, and Edith was equally destitute. So they had to get up and move on, underneath a searching and scornful eye, which mewed Hugh to sudden and passionate expostulation.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I haven’t got any money, and I didn’t know they were your chairs.”
Edith laughed silently and hopelessly at this, and they continued their walk.
“Oh! and we shall be able to sit in our own garden without paying a penny to anybody,” he said. “Edith, how heavenly it will be looking! Do you remember the last day there—how the sky wept and howled? Let’s go down at once, this evening.”
“But we are dining out, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but so we are to-morrow and the next day, and for weeks. I’m ill—you are ill; we are all ill.”