"Not at all, Aunt Alice," Percy drawled, with a jerk of his cane. "It was for precisely the opposite reason. Who knows you ain't a witch, Miss M.? Distilled? Heavens, Aunt Alice! you are not bringing Cherry too?"
Yes, Cherry was coming too, with his globular eye and sneering nose. And so poor Percy, with a cold little smile on his fine pale features, had to accommodate himself to Mrs Monnerie's leisurely pace, and she to mine, while Cherry disdainfully shuffled in our rear. We were a singular quartette, though there were only two or three small children in the palisaded garden to enjoy the spectacle; and they, after a few polite and muffled giggles, returned to their dolls.
It was a stifling afternoon. As I trod the yellow gravel the quivering atmosphere all but blinded me with its reflected glare. The only sounds to be heard were the clang of a milkman's hand-cart, and the pirouettes of a distant piano.
"And what," Mrs Monnerie suddenly inquired, looking down on me, with mauve-tinted cheek, from under her beribanded, long-handled parasol, "what is Miss M. thinking about?"
As a matter of fact I was walking at that moment in imagination with Mrs Bowater at Lyme Regis, but I seized the opportunity of hastening round from between aunt and nephew so that I could screen myself from the sun in Mrs Monnerie's ample shadow, and inquired why London gardeners were so much attached to geraniums, lobelias, calceolarias, and ice-plants? Mightn't one just as well paint the border, Mrs Monnerie, red, yellow, and blue? Then it would last—rain, snow, anything.
"Now I'll wager, Percy, you hadn't noticed that," said Mrs Monnerie in triumph.
"I make it a practice," he replied, "never to notice the obvious. It is merely a kind of least common denominator, as I believe you call 'em, and," he wafted away a yawn with his glove, "I take no interest in vulgar fractions."
I took a little look at him out of the corner of my eye, and wished that as a child I had paid more heed to my arithmetic lessons. "Look, Mrs Monnerie," I cried piteously, "poor Cherry's tongue is dangling right out of his head. He looks so hot and tired."
She swept me a radiant, if contorted, gleam. "Percy, would you take pity on poor dear Cherry? Twice round, I think, will be as much as I can comfortably manage."
So Percy had to take poor dear Cherry into his arms, just like a baby; and the quartette to all appearance became a trio.