"You can't expect to get the essential oil of violets and cowslips permeating the most nutritious and delicate of all fixed oils at less than fivepence-halfpenny for a quarter of a pound."
"Maybe not, sir, if you put it that way."
All through his breakfast, Cheyne chatted with Mrs. Ward. When he had finished he rose, put on his hat, and having bade Mrs. Ward good-bye, went out.
It was bright and clear and fresh even in Long Acre that morning, and Cheyne had a theory that bright, clear, fresh days were made for walking, so he set off for Hyde Park at a quick pace. He would have walked all round the world rather than take an omnibus, and cabs are expensive luxuries to be used only in extreme cases. What can be finer than for a man in good health and spirits to walk down Piccadilly on a bright June day, and turn into Hyde Park to meet his sweetheart? All round you were the mansions of the richest aristocracy in the world. Here was the sense that, even if one did not belong to this privileged class, one was as free to the sunlight and the street and beautifully-kept park as the owner of the bluest blood in England. If one hired ever so sorry a nag, one was as free to a gallop in the Ride as a prince of the blood. If one borrowed any kind of a carriage, one could crawl up and down that Drive with the most yellow and wrinkled of dowager countesses. And then if one were conscious of ability and ambition, there was no reason for not imagining a coronet might not some day encircle one's own brows.
There was John Churchill, who had risen from being the son of a simple Devonshire baronet to be a duke of England. But when, in addition to all these general sources of gratitude, one has the certainty that under a particular tree and upon a particular seat one is sure to find the girl whom one holds to be the dearest in all England, joy and radiance flood the whole scene, and one can hardly believe that Hyde Park is not Paradise.
As Cheyne approached the appointed seat, he found a pair of very bright brown eyes fixed on him. The face to which those eyes belonged was that of a brunette under the medium height. She rose briskly as he drew near, and as he held out his hand to her, and she gave him hers, she said, with a saucy smile:
"I have been waiting a whole five minutes for you, sir."
"I envy those five minutes that were near you when I was away."
"A pretty speech," she said, with a dainty toss of her head; "but I am in a bad humour, and you will have to say all the civil things to-day."
"If we are not to part until I have said all the civil things I have in my heart, we shall not part till sundown."