My mind, however, was made up. "Expense," I thought, "be irrigated!" I said nothing about it to Araminta, but I decided to act.
The sun was still blazing with abominable ferocity at half-past twelve when I crossed the threshold of the Taj Mahal Stores and button-holed the first peripatetic marquis I could find.
"I want," I said, mopping my brows with the disengaged hand, "to see some hose."
"Certainly, Sir," he replied with a beaming smile. "For wear on the feet, I presume?"
"Not at all," I replied as coolly as possible. "For shampooing the head."
He looked puzzled.
"I want it to water my pinks with," I explained.
A look of divine condescension overspread his features. "Ah, you require our horticultural department for that, Sir," he said. "Fourth to the left, fifth to the right, and ask again." And with an infinitely horticultured gesture of the hand he motioned me on.
After a long and adventurous Odyssey and fifteen fruitless appeals I sighted a kind of green island shore, where a young man stood in an attitude of hauteur, surrounded by a number of pink and grey snakes and brightly coloured agricultural machines.