"Then your cousins are quite high up?" she exclaimed.
"'High up?'"
"They're quite swells?"
"Oh!" he shrugged his shoulders. "No, I don't think I should call them that. Too swell for me, rather, but then I'm half a Colonial, and the other half a bohemian. I haven't been Home long—it's all strange to me; until I came out here to-day I had no idea London could be so picturesque. How glorious your Common must be in the summer!"
"So healthy!" she said promptly; "the air is so fine. We moved here from the West-end for the children's sake."
"You have children?"
"Oh!" she rolled her eyes again. "Four, Mr. Warrener. My eldest boy is getting quite big—people tell me they wouldn't believe he was mine at all, but it makes me feel quite old sometimes, to look at him. I think it's cruel of children to grow up, don't you?"
He stifled a sad assent. "Sometimes they grow up still more charming," he said.
"Oh, now, that's very sweet of you! Now really that's very pretty. But I mean to say I think it's cruel to us when they shoot up so fast. You're not married yourself yet, eh?"
"No, I hate asking favours."