“They ought to be,” Sir Isaac went on, “white and a sort of green. Like the County Council notices on Hampstead Heath. So as to blend.... You see, an ad. that hits too hard is worse than no ad. at all. It leaves a dislike.... Advertisements ought to blend. It ought to seem as though all this view were saying it. Not just that board. Now suppose we had a shade of very light brown, a kind of light khaki——”
He turned a speculative eye on Mr. Brumley as if he sought for the effect of this latter suggestion on him.
“If the whole board was invisible——” said Mr. Brumley.
Sir Isaac considered it. “Just the letters showing,” he said. “No,—that would be going too far in the other direction.”
He made a faint sucking noise with his lips and teeth as he surveyed the landscape and weighed this important matter....
“Queer how one gets ideas,” he said at last, turning away. “It was my wife told me about that board.”
He stopped to survey the house from the exact point of view his wife had taken nine days before. “I wouldn’t give this place a second thought,” said Sir Isaac, “if it wasn’t for Lady Harman.”
He confided. “She wants a week-end cottage. But I don’t see why it should be a week-end cottage. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be made into a nice little country house. Compact, of course. By using up that barn.”
He inhaled three bars of a tune. “London,” he explained, “doesn’t suit Lady Harman.”
“Health?” asked Mr. Brumley, all alert.