"No—but I'll sell it, young man."
We dickered a while and at last struck a bargain. I could not draw from the agent any opinion concerning a fair price. I had to trust to luck that I wasn't being unreasonably cheated. It was a top price, I knew, but Helen could not stay in a hotel in Los Angeles. A sum down, including a check, served to clinch the bargain. There remained only to buy some cottage furniture and install it.
On the way back the agent tried to hold me up for a commission.
"You'll collect your commission from your friend, the landlord," I replied firmly. We let it go at that.
Three days later I got enough furniture into the place to enable us to move in. My three days of preparation involved a great deal of strenuous urging. But it was done at last, even to a floored tent behind the bungalow for Helen and me to sleep in. We had likewise a cook, a protesting coloured woman from Texas, who swore many strange oaths that she had never seen any one in such a mighty hurry as I was. A special bribe got her from under the nose of some of Pasadena's elite who were besieging the employment agency.
It was late in the afternoon when Miss Brock and I carried Helen from the carriage to a long chair on the verandah and propped her up with pillows. The baby had already begun to play about the bungalow. Inside we could hear the cook talking to her pots and pans as if they were sentient beings in league against her. By the verandah stood two orange trees in blossom. The breeze stirred slightly in their branches, carrying a whiff of their sweet, sickly scent to my nostrils. I started with a shudder, for I remembered how I had always hated the scent of orange blossoms from the time I first met the flower girl under the archway of Charing Cross station. Could this be why I disliked that odour? Was I to learn the reason at last? Helen was holding my hand, resting quietly, for the journey had tired her. I saw her look at the mountains and from them to her baby at play.
"Ted," she said, so faintly I had to lean forward to hear, "I want to go home—to our own little house in Hertfordshire. Take me back, Ted. I'm homesick."