"And there's the reply I was going to send, only I forgot it," said George Lambert, handing the copy of a telegram to Charles.
"Tell Bevan I relinquish all fishing rights. Wish to be friends.—George Lambert."
"It is very generous of you," said Charles, really touched. "But I can't have it, we'll divide the rights."
"Come into the garden, my boy," said George, who had now resumed his coat, linking his arm in that of Charles and leading him out through the open French window, into the rose-scented garden, "and let's talk things over. It's the pity of the world we weren't always friends. Damn the fish stream and all the fish in it! I wish they'd been boiled before they were spawned. What's the good of fighting? Isn't life too short for fighting and divisions? Sure, there's a rose as big as a red cabbage, but you should see the roses at my house in Highgate—and where did you meet Miss Pursehouse?"
"Oh," said Charles. "I've known her for some time."
"We met her in Paris, Fanny—that's my daughter—and me met her in Paris. Fanny doesn't care for her much, and wouldn't come with me; but there's never a woman in the world that really cares for another woman, unless the other woman is as ugly as sin and a hundred. There's a melon house for you, but you should see my melon houses in Highgate, the one's I am going to have built by Arthur Lawrence of Cockspur Street; he's made a speciality of glass, but he charges cruel. It's the passion of my life, a garden."
He leaned over the gate leading to the kitchen-garden, and whistled an old Irish hunting song softly to himself as he contemplated the cabbages and peas. Charles lit a cigar. He was a fine figure of a man, this Lambert; one of those large natures in a large frame that dwarf other individualities when brought in contact with them. Hamilton Cox would pass in a crowd, and Professor Wilson was not unimpressive, but beside George Lambert, Hamilton-Cox looked a shrimp, and the Oxford professor somewhat shrivelled.
"It's the passion of my life," reiterated Fanny Lambert's father, addressing the cabbages, the marrow fat peas, Charles Bevan, and the distant woods of Sussex. "And if I'd stuck to it and left horses alone, a richer man I'd have been this day."
"I say," said Charles, who had been plunged in meditation, "why did Hancock telegraph to you, I wonder? It wasn't exactly solicitors' etiquette; the proper course, I think, would have been to communicate with your lawyers, Messrs Sykes and Fagan."
George Lambert broke into a low, mellow laugh.