“Ah, but in real life people don’t go and live in the New Forest and do nothing. What have you written in the last year?”
“Not one line. Seriously, I have been doing nothing except a little gardening and carpentering; just manual labour to keep one sane.”’
“Well, it looks as if it suited you. You look well enough, and what is so odd, you look so much younger.”
Tom laughed again.
“Ah, that strikes you, does it?” he said. “I suppose it could not have been otherwise, though that wasn’t my object in going to live there.”
“Well, tell us, then!” said Evelyn, rather impatiently. He had begun to smoke, and smoked in a most characteristic manner; that is to say, that in little more than a minute his cigarette was consumed down one side, and was a peninsula of charred paper down the other, while clouds of smoke ascended from it. Perceiving this, he instantly lit another one.
But Philip rose.
“Tell us afterwards, Tom,” he said. “Lady Ellington likes to play bridge, I know, as soon as dinner is over.”
Evelyn rose also.
“Ah, she is like me,” he said. “She wants to do things not soon, but immediately, Philip, how awfully pretty Miss Ellington is. Why wasn’t I told? I should like to paint her.”