“Ah, there I am with you. But there is so much joy and life on the surface of things that I don’t wish to probe down. Ah, Tom, a day like this now; woven webs of blue heat, hot scents from the flower beds, the faces of our friends. Is that not enough? It is for me. And, talking of faces, Miss Ellington has the most perfectly modelled face I ever saw. The more I look at it, the more it amazes me. I stared at her all breakfast. And the charm of it is its consistent irregularity; not a feature is anything like perfect, but what a whole! I wish I could do her portrait.”
Tom laughed.
“There would not be the slightest difficulty about that, I should say,” he remarked, “if you promise to present it to her mother.”
“Why, of course, I would. How funny it must feel to be hard like that. She is very bruising; I feel that I am being hit in the eye when she talks to me. And she knows how many shillings go to a sovereign.”
“Twenty,” remarked Tom.
“Ah, that is where you are wrong. She gets twenty-one for each of her sovereigns. And thirteen pence for each of her shillings, and the portrait of her daughter for nothing at all. Oh, Tom, think of it—with a background of something blue, cornflower, forget-me-nots, or lilac, to show how really golden her hair is. There’s Mrs. Home.”
Evelyn whistled with peculiar shrillness on his fingers to the neat little figure on the croquet lawn below them. She started, not violently, for nothing she did was violent, but very completely.
“Ah, it is only you,” she said. “I thought it might be an express train loose. Are you not going on the river, dear Evelyn?”
“I was prevented,” he said, jumping down the steps in one flying leap. “Dear Philippina——”
“What next? What next?” murmured Mrs. Home. “Oh, do behave, Evelyn.”