Gerald lit his pipe for reply.
As you have gathered, the Christian names of Mr. and Mrs. Williams were Gwendolen and Gerald. How well they went together! They sounded married. Gwendolen-Gerald. Gwendolen wrote them, bracketed, on bits of blotting paper, on the backs of old envelopes, on the Stores’ catalogue. They looked married.
Gerald, when they were on their honeymoon, had made an awfully good joke about them. He had said one morning, “I say, has it ever struck you that both our names begin with G? Gwendolen-Gerald. You’re a G,” and he had pointed his razor at her—he was shaving—“and I’m a G. Two Gs. Gee-Gee. See?”
Oh, Gwendolen saw immediately. It was really most witty. Quite brilliant! And so—sweet and unexpected of him to have thought of it. Gee-Gee. Oh, very good! She wished she could have told it to people. She had an idea that some people thought Gerald had not a very strong sense of humour. All the more precious for that reason, however.
“My dear, did you think of it at this moment? I mean—did you just make it up on the spot?”
Gerald, rubbing the lather with a finger, nodded. “Flashed into my mind while I was soaping my face,” he said seriously. “It’s a queer thing,”—and he dipped the razor into the pot of hot water—“I’ve noticed it before. Shaving gives me ideas.” It did, indeed, thought Gwendolen....
WEAK HEART
Although it sounded all the year round, although it rang out sometimes as early as half-past six in the morning, sometimes as late as half-past ten at night, it was in the spring, when Bengel’s violet patch just inside the gate was blue with flowers that that piano ... made the passers-by not only stop talking, but slow down, pause, look suddenly—if they were men—grave, even stern, and if they were women—dreamy, even sorrowful.
Tarana Street was beautiful in the spring; there was not a single house without its garden and trees and a plot of grass big enough to be called “the lawn.” Over the low painted fences, you could see, as you ran by, whose daffys were out, whose wild snowdrop border was over and who had the biggest hyacinths, so pink and white, the colour of cocoanut ice. But nobody had violets that grew, that smelled in the spring sun like Bengel’s. Did they really smell like that? Or did you shut your eyes and lean over the fence because of Edie Bengel’s piano?