“Personally I never was inside,” said the gardener, who had a natural preference for talking about himself. “But then I am building a path of my own.”
“Anyway, what did you mean originally?”
The gardener blushed again. He showered reproaches on himself. “Only that we might walk into Southampton as friends. And if we liked it.... Besides I owe you a shilling, and you’d better keep an eye on your financial interests. My boat sails to-morrow. You know, it is a nice shock to me to find that a militant suffragette is human at all. When I held your arm, I was surprised to find it was not iron.”
“Did you say your boat sailed to-morrow?”
“I should have said, ‘Our boat sails to-morrow.’”
“There’s no time to walk. We’ll hire a car in Aldershot.”
So at sunset, side by side, they arrived in sight of Southampton’s useful but hackneyed sheet of water.
Even then they had no plans. In youth one likes the feeling of standing on empty air with a blank in front of one.
The suffragette paid for the car without question. “I am quite well off,” she excused herself, as they traversed the smug and comfortless suburbs of the town. “Has that shilling I lent you to invest brought in any interest?”
“I hate money,” posed the gardener; “but I have a profession, you know. I am a gardener.”