"When you will. She much desires to see you," the Father answered.
"The sooner, the better," said Anthony. "The sooner she definitely and permanently dismisses this folly from her mind, the better for every one concerned."
"Possibly you could go with me now?" the Father suggested. "Her launch, which brought me here, attends at the end of the garden."
"Certainly I will go with you now," said Anthony. "Wait while I put on a coat."
He ran back to the tennis-court, caught up his coat, and donned it.
Then, all heated and in flannels as he was, he accompanied Father
Angelo to the launch.
XXV
Susanna, Miss Sandus, a white peacock, and six ring-doves were taking refreshments in the garden, in the shade of an oleander-tree. There were cakes, figs, and lemonade, grains of dried maize, and plenty of good succulent hemp-seed. The ring-doves liked the hemp-seed and the maize, but the white peacock seemed to prefer sponge-cake soaked in lemonade.
"I know a literary man who once taught a peacock to eat sponge-cake soaked in absinthe," Miss Sandus remarked, on a key of reminiscence.
"Really? An unprincipled French literary man, I suppose?" was
Susanna's natural inference.
"No, that's the funny part of it," said Miss Sandus. "He is an eminent and highly respectable English literary man, and the father of a family into the bargain. I dare n't give his name, lest he might have the law of me."