"Whatever will you do, grandpa, when you're too old for gardening?"
"I expect I'll start golf. But I hope I shan't live as long as that."
FOR OURSELVES ALONE.
Our hostess had taken us over to "Sheltered End," the pleasant country home of Mrs. Willoughby Brock, to play tennis. As however there was only one court and quite a number of young and middle-aged people were standing near it with racquets in their hands and an expression on their faces in which frustration and anticipation fought for supremacy, it followed that other beguilements had to be found. My own fate was to fall into the hands of Mrs. Brock, whose greatest delight on earth seems to be to have a stranger to whom she can display the beauties of her abode and enlarge upon the unusual qualities of her personality. She showed and told me all. We explored the estate from the dog-kennel to the loggia for sleeping out "under the stars;" from the pergola to the library; from the sundial to the telephone, "the only one for miles;" and as we walked between the purple and mauve Michaelmas daisies in her long herbaceous borders, with Red Admiral butterflies among the myriad little clean blossoms, she said how odd it was that some people have the gift of attracting friends and others not; and what a strange thing it is that where one person has to toil to make a circle others are automatically surrounded by nice creatures; and asked me if I had any views as to the reason, but did not pause for the reply.
It was a warm mellow day—almost the first of summer, according to one's senses, although nearly the last, according to the calendar—and Mrs. Brock was so happy to be in a monologue that I could enjoy the garden almost without interruption. For a two and a half years' existence it certainly was a triumph. Here and there a reddening apple shone. The hollyhocks must have been ten feet high.
"Ah! here comes the dear Vicar," said Mrs. Brock suddenly, and, rising up from a rose which I was inhaling (and I wish that people would grow roses, as they used to do years ago, nose-high), I saw a black figure approaching.