"He's very fond of plums," said his wife.
"Ah, well then, I hope your crop will be better than you fear. It's a lovely old place," I continued. "The whole character of it is that of certain places that he describes. Your house is like one of his pictures."
"It's a pleasant little place. There are hundreds like it."
"Oh, it has got his tone," I said, laughing, and insisting on my point the more that Mrs. Ambient appeared to see in my appreciation of her simple establishment a sign of limited experience.
It was evident that I insisted too much. "His tone?" she repeated, with a quick look at me, and a slightly heightened color.
"Surely he has a tone, Mrs. Ambient."
"Oh, yes, he has indeed! But I don't in the least consider that I am living in one of his books; I should n't care for that, at all," she went on, with a smile which had in some degree the effect of converting her slightly sharp protest into a joke deficient in point. "I am afraid I am not very literary," said Mrs. Ambient. "And I am not artistic."
"I am very sure you are not ignorant, not stupid," I ventured to reply, with the accompaniment of feeling immediately afterwards that I had been both familiar and patronizing. My only consolation was in the reflection that it was she, and not I, who had begun it. She had brought her idiosyncrasies into the discussion.
