“Here are your pinks and white phloxes. Put the roots in soon.”
“If Evergreen has time to-morrow——”
“Don’t wait for him; he’ll kill them. Gardeners have a knack of sticking their spades through the things they dislike. Do it yourself. I am so glad I can’t afford a gardener—to give me a plant for the table when he chooses.” Her eye fell on a melancholy petunia.
“Have you been to any more sales, dear?” asked Mrs. Turle. “Have you added to your interesting collection of nice old things?”
“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Clutton’s voice became enthusiastic. “I went to such a delightful sale at Carrsland. I bought a little oak table. A dealer ran it up to thirty shillings—the wretch! He passed me on the road! I was walking, as usual; he was cycling. I instantly smelt him out as a dealer, and I was half inclined to tip him off the bicycle with the point of my umbrella, gag him, bind him to a tree until the sale was over. I wish I had; it would have been so deliciously simple.”
There was an awkward silence; then Nancy said, in her gently gushing way:
“I wish you’d ride a bicycle. It’s such fun.”
Maria Furlonger, of the “Warren,” added politely:
“Yes. You should ride; it’s so good for the brain; and I’ve heard you write—or something of the sort.”
“Bicycling’s very bad for one’s logic; you can’t imagine a logician on a bicycle. I don’t write; my husband does.”