"Wet? I am saturated! I am drenched!" cried the owner of Mitching Dean; while the gentleman with the hose ran off in the direction of London as fast as his legs would carry him. "I must go in and—these liberties are really unpardonable. The gardeners at Mitching Dean would never dare to treat a visitor with such gross familiarity!"
He hastened away, presenting the distressed back of a man whose every movement floods his spinal cord with sudden showers of displaced cold water.
"Mr. Rodney's wrong," Miss Bindler said, with her usual short decision.
"Wrong?" said the Duchess. "To sit at tea under a hose without knowing it? Anyone might do the same with such gardeners. Mr. Lite ought not to engage them."
"Don't abuse the man," said Miss Bindler; "he didn't do it on purpose."
"Then why did he run away?" asked Lady Drake.
"Because he's a coward and a quick sprinter," said Miss Bindler. "He was watching us and forgot his hose. All the gardeners are watching us."
The house-party started slightly, and, looking about them with opened eyes, were soon aware that Miss Bindler had followed her usual habit of speaking the truth. The self-conscious artists of the wage-earning world were, indeed, very intent upon those assembled about the tea-tables. The man who was disturbing the rose-tree in its home of years had his head set round like a deformity in a frantic effort to keep his eye on Lady Drake. The person who had been acting with levity among the sunflowers was now pretending to clip a diminutive box-hedge, and was in reality snapping the air while he gazed steadily at Mr. Bush. The individual who was fighting with the laurustinus had one eye fastened in a most expressive manner on Mr. Ingerstall, while the other seemed anxious to do sentry duty over Mrs. Verulam. And the gentlemen with the roller were staring at the whole party with a pertinacity and resolution which prevented them from observing that their enormous instrument was now doing its fell work upon an elaborately-conceived pattern of red, pink, and white geraniums.
"How very strange!" said the Duchess. "Are they a party of mesmerists, do you think? Really, it can scarcely be mere idle curiosity."
"The chap who's carving the atmosphere looks to me like a third-rate detective," observed Miss Bindler, munching a captain's biscuit.