‘Historical, that’s what I mean,’ he explained. ‘I like everything old, you know, except women.’
She thought with an inward smile of his newness.
Presently he said in a tone of surprise: ‘I never imagined that you’d care about roses.’
‘Yes, why not? We’ve got quite a number at Morton. Why don’t you come over to-morrow and see them?’
‘Do your William Allen Richardsons do well?’ he inquired.
‘I think so.’
‘Mine don’t. I can’t make it out. This year, of course, they’ve been damaged by green-fly. Just come here and look at these standards, will you? They’re being devoured alive by the brutes!’ And then as though he were talking to a friend who would understand him: ‘Roses seem good to me—you know what I mean, there’s virtue about them—the scent and the feel and the way they grow. I always had some on the desk in my office, they seemed to brighten up the whole place, no end.’
He started to ink in the names on the labels with a gold fountain pen which he took from his pocket. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, as he bent his face over the labels, ‘yes, I always had three or four on my desk. But Birmingham’s a foul sort of place for roses.’
And hearing him, Stephen found herself thinking that all men had something simple about them; something that took pleasure in the things that were blameless, that longed, as it were, to contact with Nature. Martin had loved huge, primitive trees; and even this mean little man loved his roses.
Angela came strolling across the lawn: ‘Come, you two,’ she called gaily, ‘tea’s waiting in the hall!’