Courtesy put it in her purse. “Good-bye,” she said. “So sorry you must go. Reserve a halo for me.”
The gardener rose immediately and walked upstairs with decision into his bedroom, which, by some freak of chance, was papered blue to match his soul. It was indeed the anteroom of the gardener’s soul. Nightly he went through it into the palace of himself.
He took out of it now his toothbrush, a change of raiment, and Hilda. It occurs to me that I have not yet mentioned Hilda. She was a nasturtium in a small pot.
On his way downstairs he met Miss Shakespeare, who held the destinies of 21 Penny Street, and did not hold with the gardener’s unexpected ways.
“Your weekly account ...” she began.
“I have left everything I have as hostages with fate,” said the gardener. “When I get tired of Paradise I’ll come back.”
On the door-step he exclaimed, “I will be a merry vagabond, tra-la-la ...” and he stepped out transfigured—in theory.
As he passed the dining-room window he caught sight of the red of Courtesy’s hair, as she characteristically continued eating.
“An episode,” he thought. “Unscathed I pass on. And the woman, as women must, remains to weep and grow old. Courtesy, my little auburn lover, I have passed on—for ever.”
But he had to return two minutes later to fetch a pocket-handkerchief from among the hostages. And Courtesy, as she met him in the hall, nodded in an unsuitably unscathed manner.