“I’d thought of them on the screen, my dear.”
“Oh no! Christmas roses are so appropriate to the font, and besides”—archly—“Sir John will let us have some flowers out of the greenhouse for the screen.”
“I’m damned if I will.”
Rose Alard flushed at the insult to her husband’s cloth which she held to lie in the oath; none the less she stuck to her coaxing.
“Oh, but you always have, Sir John.”
“Have I?—Well, as I’ve just told my wife, there’s nothing like a new experience. I don’t keep three gardeners just to decorate Leasan church, and the flowers happen to be rather scarce this year. I want them for the house.”
“Isn’t he terrible?” Lady Alard’s whispered moan to Doris once more filled the room.
Jenny laughed.
“What are you laughing at, Jenny?”
“Oh, I dunno.”