I suggested “trim” as a near translation of “propre” and “bien-ajusté.”
“Trim, yes,” she agreed enthusiastically. “My daughter tells me you are an author. There are three lime trees in the pasture and the cattle have eaten the branches as high as they can reach, so that now the trees have the precise shape of a bell. Even the trees in the Park, you see, are trim—not, it is true, like Versailles, where the poor things are made to grow according to plan—but all the county is one great landscape garden; all of England, nearly. Don’t you agree with me? One feels that there must always be a game-keeper or a policeman just round the corner.”
She waited for my answer this time, and something in the eagerness of her expression begged me to play up to her lead.
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said, intensely aware of Anne’s proximity. “I was thinking something of the same kind, only this evening, when I went to meet Arthur in the wood. He and I were discussing it, too, as we came back. That sense of everything belonging to some one else, of having no right, hardly the right to breathe without the Jervaises’ permission.”
Her gesture finally confirmed the fact that perfect confidence was established between us. I felt as if she had patted my shoulder. But she may have been afraid that I might blunder into too obvious a statement, if I were permitted to continue, for she abruptly changed her tactics by saying to Brenda,—
“So you ran away in the middle of the dance?”
“Well, we’d finished dancing, as a matter of fact,” Brenda explained.
Mr. Banks shifted uneasily in his chair. “Ran away, Miss Brenda?” he asked. “Did you say you’d run away?”
She flattered him with a look that besought his approval. “I simply couldn’t stand it any longer,” she said.
“But you’ll be going back?” he returned, after a moment’s pause.