Whose idea was it to make money round? I sometimes feel certain I could control it better if it were square. “It is mine,” said the gardener, still posing as a philosopher. “A little splinter out of the brimstone lake. Feel it.” Courtesy smelt it without repulsion. “Talk again,” she said. “Where would you be without money?” “Where would I be without money? Where would I be without any of the vices? Singing in Paradise, I suppose.” “If I pocket this threepenny bit,” said Courtesy, that practical girl, “what will you say?” “Thank you—and good-bye,” replied the gardener. “It is my last link with the world.” Courtesy put it in her purse. “Good-bye,” she said. “So sorry you must go. Reserve a halo for me.” The gardener rose immediately and walked upstairs with decision into his bedroom, which, by some freak of chance, was papered blue to match his soul. It was indeed the anteroom of the gardener’s soul. Nightly he went through it into the palace of himself. He took out of it now his toothbrush, a change of raiment, and Hilda. It occurs to me that I have not yet mentioned Hilda. She was a nasturtium in a small pot. On his way downstairs he met Miss Shakespeare, who held the destinies of 21 Penny Street, and did not hold with the gardener’s unexpected ways. “Your weekly account ...” she began. “I have left everything I have as hostages with fate,” said the gardener. “When I get tired of Paradise I’ll come back.” On the door-step he exclaimed, “I will be a merry vagabond, tra-la-la ...” and he stepped out transfigured—in theory. As he passed the dining-room window he caught sight of the red of Courtesy’s hair, as she characteristically continued eating. “An episode,” he thought. “Unscathed I pass on. And the woman, as women must, remains to weep and grow old. Courtesy, my little auburn lover, I have passed on—for ever.” But he had to return two minutes later to fetch a pocket-handkerchief from among the hostages. And Courtesy, as she met him in the hall, nodded in an unsuitably unscathed manner. The gardener walked, with Hilda in his hand. It became night. Practically speaking, it is of course impossible for night to occur within three paragraphs of luncheon-time. But actually the day is often to me as full of holes as a Gruyère cheese. To the gardener the beginnings of a walk which he felt sure must eventually find a place in history were torn ruthlessly out of his experience. He was thinking about red hair, and all things red. He hoped that Hilda, when she flowered, would be the exact shade of a certain head of hair he had lately seen. “Hoping and planning for Hilda like a mother-to-be,” he thought, but that pose was impossible to sustain. Red hair. He did not think of the girl Courtesy at all. Only her hair flamed in his memory. The remembrance of the rest of her was as faint and lifeless as a hairdresser’s dummy.