“You can’t come this way, madam! This road is private!”
“Can’t I just walk straight through on the path? It is so much nearer than going all the way round!”
“The park is private, madam; there is no thoroughfare.”
Occasionally some child of sin would endeavour to prevaricate.
“I wish to pay a call!”
“Which house did you wish to go to, madam?”
“Er—Buona Vista!”
“Buona Vistas is away from home. They won’t be back till the end of the month.”
Foiled in her attempts the miscreant would have to retrace her steps, or make her way round by the narrow lane by means of which the tradesmen made their way to the back-doors of these secluded dwellings.
Perhaps the most unpromisingly decorous house in the Park was christened “The Nook,” with that appalling lack of humour which is nowhere portrayed more strikingly than in the naming of suburban residences. It stood fair and square in the middle of the crescent; and from garret to cellar there was not a nooky corner on which the eye could light. Two drawing-room windows flanked the front door on the left; two dining-room windows on the right. There was not even a gable or a dormer to break the square solidity of the whole. Fourteen windows in all, each chastely shrouded in Nottingham lace curtains, looped back by yellow silk bands, fastened, to a fraction of an inch, at the same height from the sill, while Aspidistra plants, mounted on small tables, were artfully placed so as to fill up the space necessarily left in the centre. They were handsome plants of venerable age, which Mason, the parlourmaid, watered twice a week, sponging their leaves with milk before she replaced them in their pots.