“If I chose I suppose I could keep them,” she murmured incoherently to herself as she crossed the Row.
It was an airless afternoon.
Under the small formal trees sheltering the path she clapped her sunshade to, and slackened speed.
The rhododendrons, in vivid clumps of new and subtle colours brushing the ground, were in their pride. Above, the sky showed purely blue. She walked on a little way towards Stanhope Gate when, overcome by the odoriferous fragrance of heliotropes and xenias, she sank serenely to a bench.
Far off by the Serpentine a woman was preaching from a tree to a small audience gathered beneath. How primeval she looked as her arms shot out in argument, a discarded cock’s-feather boa looped to an upper bough dangling like some dark python in the air above.
Miss Sinquier sat on until the shadows fell.
She found her friend on reaching Hay Hill in the midst of muffins and tea.
“I gave you up. I thought you lost,” Mrs. Sixsmith exclaimed, hitching higher her veil with fingers super-manicured, covered in oxydized metal rings.
“I was dozing in the Park.”
“Dreamy kid.”