Tony breathed more freely.
After all, there were trees and grass; good grass, and more of it than in the Resident's garden. He took heart a little and summoned up courage to inquire: "But where are the tulips?"
"It's too early for tulips yet," Jan answered. "By and by there will be quantities. How did you know about them? Did dear Mummy tell you? But they're in Hyde Park, not here."
Tony made no answer. He was, as usual, weighing and considering and making up his mind.
Presently he spoke. "It's different," he said, slowly, "but I rather like to look at it."
Tony never said whether he thought things were pretty or ugly. All he knew was that certain people and places, pictures and words, sometimes filled him with an exquisite sense of pleasure, while others merely bored or exasperated or were positively painful.
His highest praise was "I like to look at it." When he didn't like to look at it, he had found it wiser to express no opinion at all, except in moments of confidential expansion, and these were rare with Tony.
Meg had found them a nice little furnished flat on the fifth floor in one of the blocks behind Ken
sington High Street, and Hannah must surely have been waiting behind the door, so instantaneously was it opened, when Jan and her party left the lift.
There were tears in Hannah's eyes and her nose was red as she welcomed "Miss Fay's motherless bairns." She was rather shocked that there was no sign of mourning about any of them except Jan, who wore—mainly as a concession to Hannah's prejudices—a thin black coat and skirt she had got just before she left Bombay.