“You’ve deserted the dolls?” I asked.
He made the face of one who has just taken unpleasant medicine.
“Don’t remind me of them,” he said. “I hope I’ll never see one of the little brutes again. When I think of the years I spent worrying and sweating over them—still they helped me attain my objective. I was president of the company, you know, when I resigned.”
When I was leaving his house he said to me, “You must come up when the roses are blooming. They ought to be beauties; I’ve been studying books on rose growing for the last ten years.”
Three months later I was driving near Briar Farm, and I stopped in to see Appleby and his house and the roses. I saw a figure in old clothes pottering about in the garden. It seemed to me as I watched him that his walk sagged. He would pick a rose bug from a leaf, look at it for a whole minute or more, put it into a can, and then pick off another rose bug. He saw me standing there and came slowly toward me. I thought he seemed pale. He shook hands with me limply.
“How well the roses are getting on!” I said.
“Do you think so?” he said without enthusiasm.
We went into his living room—he had done it in old-Spanish style, after all. I admired a venerable refectory table. Appleby shrugged his shoulders. There were long silences in the course of our conversation, during which Appleby would sit with head on chest, staring at a rug; and yet I felt somehow that he did not see the rug.
“What a stunning lamp!” I said.
“Oh, it’ll do,” said Appleby; his tone seemed dull.