“You are obstinate,” said Robert. “I never saw such a one for ’aving her own way.”
“Not much use having anybody else’s way,” she said. “Bloomsbury, one,” she said to the conductor.
The principle thus definitely laid down being adhered to during the afternoon, Robert found himself unable in consequence to assume the air of condescension and patronage that he had promised to wear; indeed, Miss Bell took the entire management of the afternoon into her own hands, with a quaint air of decision which surprised Robert and interested him, so that when at the end of the tram line she said, “Regent’s Park,” it was to Regent’s Park they went; on Robert in his reckless way suggesting a ’bus, she said, “Walk, it’s no distance,” and that was the mode of transport adopted. In Regent’s Park they sat on chairs near to sweet-smelling oval bouquets of flowers, watching the white-sashed nursemaids and the children, and whilst Robert (to Trixie’s content) smoked a large, important cigar, she chattered away about her plans for the future. Trixie revived the old ambition of a milliner’s establishment, with French words in white letters on the window, in some position not too far distant from Pimlico Walk, so that old customers should be preserved, whilst new ones were being caught; Robert watched her admiringly as she sketched this magnificent project, noting the decision of her chin and the flush of interest on her attractive face. The cigar finished, or nearly finished (for Robert was not yet a confirmed smoker), they walked arm-in-arm through the gates to the upper portion of the park, where there were sheep to be looked at, and near to the fountain, small debating societies, that seemed to grow on the grass in the style of mushrooms, and were made up of grubby men, arguing, as it seemed, on every topic of which they were ignorant, with here a reference to John Stuart Mill, and there satire at the expense of Apostles. Near to one of these groups Robert and Trixie stopped.
“As for your so-galled Queen, my goot Anglish friends,” a foreign gentleman with no collar shouted in the centre of the mushroom, “it don’t dake me long times to gif you my obinion about her and all her plooming Gofernment.”
“Now you’re beggin’ the question,” said his opponent. “Let’s keep to the point at issue. If you’ve ever read Plito, you would have been aware that—”
“I’m not dalkin’ about Blato,” said the foreigner, with excited gesture. “I’m dalkin’ about the bresent day and the stupid, foolish idea that you Anglish are a free nation. My obinion of your Queen, my fellow, is simply these. She’s—”
Not quite clear what the foreign gentleman wanted to say, and impossible to hear what he did say, for at that moment a sailor lad edged his way through the crowd, two brown hands seized the neck of his collarless shirt, and at once the two—Robert and the foreign critic—were running away pell-mell to Gloucester Gate, the foreigner forced to go at a good pace despite his struggles, and being thrown eventually well into the roadway outside the park. Robert returned to Trixie a little heated with the run; Trixie’s blue dotted blouse danced with delight and admiration.
“That’ll learn him,” said Robert, darkly.
In the Zoological Gardens they walked through the long house where lions and tigers lodge, and Robert kissed Trixie in full sight of a very sulky old lion, who had a bed-sitting room near to the end, making the lion use an exclamation of annoyance and envy that cannot well be printed. Then they went out into the gardens to see long, thin, ridiculous legs with birds perched riskily atop, and had a long conversation with one of the highly-coloured parrots, who were all talking at once, and seemed, like the debaters outside, to be denouncing somebody, and in similarly raucous voices.
“At tea, Bobbie,” said Trixie, with a touch of her decisive manner, “I want to talk to you.”