“We shall be ready in a minute,” she called out, nodding to him. “I am so glad you are come, for I thought you might have forgotten our walk.”
“It was too hot before,” said Anthony, strolling towards them, and stretching himself lazily upon the grass.
“And I have done no end of work. You see those bare places in the beds, over which you were so unmerciful, are quite filled. Luckily Thomas had a great many surplus plants this year.”
As she stood up, a great clump of flowering shrubs—guelder roses, pink thorn, azaleas—made a pretty and variegated background. She had drawn off her big gloves, and was beating the earth from them as she spoke, and smiling down upon him with bright pleasantness. Anthony looked at her, and a satisfied expression deepened in his eyes. He had hold of one of the ribbons of her dress, and was fingering it.
“Why don’t you always wear lilac?” was his somewhat irrelevant answer.
“You don’t attend to what I am saying,” said Winifred, a little impatiently. “I want to know what you think of the flowers, and not of my dress.”
“Why should I not talk about that as well? You have at least as much to do with the one as the other.”
“It is not what I have to do with it, but how it looks when it is done. Marion, can’t you prevent Anthony from being frivolous?”
“Don’t ask Marion,” said Anthony, biting a bit of grass. “She has been falling foul of me all the way here, though neither of us can exactly say what it has been about. My ruffled feathers want smoothing down, if you please, Winifred.”
“You don’t look ruffled a bit.”