Our enterprise was doomed to receive a blow, crushing and apparently mortal. Neither Mr. Dudley Manners nor Miss Constance Wortley was at home. They had gone away in different directions, the man thought, immediately after luncheon.
We went back tremblingly to the low phaeton and the tall horse.
“O, Pelleas,” I said in despair. “And whatever shall we do now? Those poor little people.”
Pelleas looked at his watch.
“We can take an hour,” he said. “We’ll give Dudley Manners or the botanical lady an hour to get back, and we’ll call again.”
“O, Pelleas,” I said, “and if they aren’t there then let us go home and be married anyway—” quite as if the wedding were our own.
But Pelleas shook his head.
“Dear,” he said, “we mustn’t, you know. We really mustn’t. It wouldn’t do in the very least.”
“Pelleas,” said I irrelevantly, “we were just their age when we were married.”
“So we were,” said Pelleas, and drew the tall horse to a walk in the sun of the long green road, and we fell to remembering.