“Disappoint her. It’s good for old women to be disappointed. It whips up their circulation.” “I shouldn’t much regret disappointing the old woman,” she admitted, “and I should rather like an hour or two of stolen freedom. I don’t mind owning that I’ve generally found you, as men go, a moderately interesting man to talk with. But the deuce of it is... You permit the expression?” “I’m devoted to the expression.” “The deuce of it is, I’m supposed to be driving,” she explained. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. So many suppositions in this world are baseless,” he reminded her. “But there’s the prison van,” she said. “It’s one of the tiresome rules in the female wing of Castle Ennui that you’re always supposed, more or less, to be driving. And though you may cheat the authorities by slipping out of the prison van directly it’s turned the corner, and sending it on ahead, there it remains, a factor that can’t be eliminated. The prison van will relentlessly await my arrival in the old woman’s street.” “That only adds to the sport. Let it wait. When a factor can’t be eliminated, it should be haughtily ignored. Besides, there are higher considerations. If you leave me, what shall I do with the rest of this weary day?” “You can go to your club.” He threw up his hand. “Merciful lady! What sin have I committed? I never go to my club, except when I’ve been wicked, as a penance. If you will permit me to employ a metaphor—oh, but a tried and trusty metaphor—when one ship on the sea meets another in distress, it stops and comforts it, and forgets all about its previous engagements and the prison van and everything. Shall we cross to the north, and see whether the Serpentine is in its place? Or would you prefer to inspect the eastern front of the Palace? Or may I offer you a penny chair?” “I think a penny chair would be the maddest of the three dissipations,” she decided. And they sat down in penny chairs. “It’s rather jolly here, isn’t it?” said he. “The trees, with their black trunks, and their leaves, and things. Have you ever seen such sumptuous foliage? And the greensward, and the shadows, and the sunlight, and the atmosphere, and the mistiness—isn’t it like pearl-dust and gold-dust floating in the air? It’s all got up to imitate the background of a Watteau. We must do our best to be frivolous and ribald, and supply a proper foreground. How big and fleecy and white the clouds are. Do you think they’re made of cotton-wool? And what do you suppose they paint the sky with? There never was such a brilliant, breath-taking blue. It’s much too nice to be natural. And they’ve sprinkled the whole place with scent, haven’t they? You notice how fresh and sweet it smells. If only one could get rid of the sparrows—the cynical little beasts! hear how they’re chortling—and the people, and the nursemaids and children. I have never been able to understand why they admit the public to the parks.”