"But we've got old Mrs Rayne and the manager, who are both quite as nasty to us as any shop-walker could be," she protested quickly. "Rayne is constantly nagging at one or other of us if we don't effect a sale. And that's too bad, for, as you know, many ladies come in merely to look round and price the hats. They have no intention whatever of buying, and make lame excuses that the shape doesn't suit them, or that the colour is too gaudy. It isn't fair to us." "Of course not," I said. "But forget all your business worries for to-day, and let's have a pleasant hour or two out in the country. There's a train from Waterloo at twelve; so we'll go to Teddington and walk across Bushey Park. Do you care for that?" "Of course," she cried, delighted. "Why, it's fully ten or even eleven months since we were there last time. Do you remember, we went down last Chestnut Sunday? Weren't the trees in the avenue beautiful then?" "Yes," I said, remembering the pleasant afternoon we had afterwards spent on the river. But it was now too early in the season for boating in comfort, therefore to wander about would, I knew, be far more enjoyable. Therefore, we took a cab over to Waterloo, and travelling down to Teddington, lunched at the Clarence, and afterwards, in the bright spring sunshine, strolled up the avenue, where already the trees were bursting into leaf. There were but few people, for as yet the season was considered too early. On summer Sundays, when London is dusty and the streets of closed shops palpitate with heat, then crowds of workers come there by all sorts of conveyances to get fresh air and obtain sight of the cooling scenery. But in early spring it is too far afield. Yet there is no more beautiful spot within easy reach of London, and in the quietness of a bright spring day, when the grass is green, when everything is bursting into bud, and the birds are singing merrily as if thankful that winter has passed, I had always found it far more pleasant than in the hot days, when omnibuses tear wildly along the avenue, raising clouds of dust, when carts full of coarse-voiced gentlemen from the East shout loudly, and chaff those who are seated on the tops of the four-horsed 'buses, and when the public-houses are filled to overflowing by crowds of ever-thirsty _bona-fide_ travellers.