"Not they, and you know they don't. But they think that we think that they do, and that again comes to the same thing as far as they are concerned. And now you shall trundle me round the garden for fear anybody else should come and talk to us before you've told me how Annabel is, and how Restham is looking, and how you like being married, and everything you've done since I saw you last, and all the other things that we haven't time to write letters to each other about, and shouldn't know how to spell if we tried." So Isabel and I started on a pilgrimage through the Garden of Dreams, and soon succeeded in bringing ourselves abreast of each other's times. She was always such an easy woman to talk to, in spite of the fact that she talked almost incessantly herself: but one felt that she could always listen at the same time. "And so you have taken a country house here," I said, after we had treated each other to a _résumé_ of all that had happened to us since we last met. "Only for this year. We have secured a ninety-nine years' lease of what is called 'a desirable site,' and are going to build a house on it after our own hearts, which will give us unalloyed joy in the building and acute disappointment when it is finished. But the joy will outweigh the disappointment, as it really always does." "Then shall you spend the autumn here?" I asked as we wended our way down one of the green aisles of the fruit garden. "Yes. I have been rather seedy--overdone, you know, with trying to get more out of life than there was in it, and pretending to Paul that the Golden Age was going to begin next week, because he minded so dreadfully when he thought it wasn't--so the doctors ordered me to take draughts of the Elixir of East Coast air in order to get young again." "I am sorry--very sorry--to hear you haven't been well. I know of old how you have always hated to be _hors de combat_." "And I hate it still--especially when Paul is in Office, and I want to stand by him and help him. But for a long time I, who so wanted to 'serve,' was obliged--like Milton--to 'stand and wait': and even that I had to do lying down! But now I am all right again, and we are going to have a permanent country house, so that the next time I have to 'stand and wait' I can do it in the garden." "And where is the desirable site?" I cried. She named a place about twenty miles from Restham. "Oh, what luck for us!" I cried. "You will be within easy motoring distance."