“My dear Mr. Holland!” she mocked him, “you must do as I tell you if you are going to help me at all.”
“I’ll certainly carry out your wishes,” he said, “but it is a weighty lot of money to give away.”
“It is a weighter lot of money to keep,” she said quietly. “There is another favour I ask—you must not write that I am the donor. You can describe me as a society woman, a retired trades-woman, or as anything you like, except as an actress, and of course my name must not even be hinted. Will you do this?”
He nodded.
“I have them here,” she said. “I kept them at the hotel and had them sent down to me by special messenger yesterday. And now that that business is over, come inside and lunch.”
It was very dear to have her leaning on his arm; her dependence thrilled him. He wanted to take her up in his arms and carry her through that sweet-smelling place, slowly and with dignity, as nurses carry sleeping babies. He wondered what she would think and say, if she guessed his thoughts. It made him hot to consider the possibility for a second.
She did not go direct to the house, but took him through a sunken patch hidden by low bushes, and he stopped and admired, for here a master hand had laid out a Chinese garden with tiny bridges and dwarf trees and great clumps of waxen rock flowers that harboured a faint and delicate scent, a hint of which came up to him.
“You were thinking of carrying me,” she said, apropros of nothing.
Tab went a fiery red.
“But for the proprieties, I should like it. Do you like babies, Mr. Tab?”