THE WALSHINGHAMS
He rested on his hat and stick and looked appreciatively out of the window, and she glanced at him for one swift moment. A suggestion that might have come from "The Art of Conversing" came into his head. "Have you a garden?" he said.
She shrugged her shoulders. "Only a little one," she said, and then, "perhaps you would like to see it."
"I like gardenin'," said Kipps, with memories of a pennyworth of nasturtiums he had once trained over his uncle's dustbin.
She led the way with a certain relief.
They emerged through a four-seasons coloured glass door to a little iron veranda that led by iron steps to a minute walled garden. There was just room for a patch of turf and a flower-bed; one sturdy variegated Euonymus grew in the corner. But the early June flowers, the big narcissus, snow-upon-the-mountains, and a fine show of yellow wallflowers shone gay.
"That's our garden," said Helen. "It's not a very big one, is it?"
"I like it," said Kipps.
"It's small," she said, "but this is the day of small things."
Kipps didn't follow that.
"If you were writing when I came," he remarked, "I'm interrupting you."
She turned round with her back to the railing and rested, leaning on her hands. "I had finished," she said. "I couldn't get on."
"Were you making up something?" asked Kipps.
There was a little interval before she smiled. "I
201
