“All his clothes are black,” said young Joan Ilden, “but I was helping Edith dust in his room this morning and he has the nicest blue pyjamas.”
“Do go pull Bobby out of the raspberries,” Olive said and fell into a sulk which she didn’t define. She lounged in her chair watching the light play on the straight bole of a tree behind the emptied place where Mark had been sitting.... Rage succeeded the sulk. This was a stupid augmentation of her income. Olive disapproved landholding but it would be easier every way when Ilden’s uncle died and he came into the Suffolk property. Then she would be able to live in London instead of flitting there for a breath of diversion. She hoped Mark would go to London soon.... He had the mind of a badly schooled stock-broker! Olive lifted her portfolio from the table and penciled a note to her husband. “I do wish you could slaughter your dear uncle, Jack. Ian Gail has sent me a silly Yankee to educate. I hope I have no insular prejudice against the harmless, necessary Colonial but this cad—” Then she thought. “What am I saying here? I don’t mean it. I’m lying,” and tore up the paper.
Mark went swimming in the Itchen and did not come home until seven. He dressed in six minutes and found Olive clad in black lace by the drawing room mantel of white stone. He said, “Say, I ran into a flock of sheep an’ an old feller with a crook. Do they still do that?”
“Crooks. And he had on a blue—what d’you call it?—smock?”
Olive laughed and lifted her arms behind her head.
“Did you think some one was staging a pastoral for your benefit? But you didn’t come home to tea and there were some quite amusing people here. I kept them as long as I could.”
“Too bad,” said Mark, “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t lie so. You’re not at all sorry. You’re bored when people come and you have to play the British gentleman. And there are so many other things better worth doing.”
“That’s in Shaw,” Mark guessed, “Clyde Fitch was talkin’ about it. But what’s wrong with actin’ like a gentleman?”