“You’ll see our A B C soon. You know. The one we go to after the Saturday pops. You’ve been to it. You came to it the day we came to Madame Schumann’s farewell. It’s just round here in Piccadilly. Here it is. Glorious. I must make the others come up once more before I die. I always have a scone. I don’t like the aryated bread. We go along the Burlington Arcade too. I don’t believe you’ve ever been along there. It’s simply perfect. Glove shops and fans and a smell of the most exquisite scent everywhere.” “Dear me. It must be very captivating.” “Now we shall pass the parks. Oh, isn’t the sun A1 copper bottom!” Mrs. Henderson laughed wistfully. “What delicious shade under those fine old trees. I almost wish I had brought my _en-tout-cas_.” “Oh no, you don’t really want it. There will be more breeze presently. The bus always begins to go quicker along here. It’s the Green Park, that one. Those are clubs that side, the West End clubs. It’s fascinating all the way along here to Hyde Park Corner. You just see Park Lane going up at the side. Park Lane. It goes wiggling away, straight into heaven. We’ve never been up there. I always read the name at the corner.” “You ridiculous chick--ah, there is the Royal Academy of Arts.” “Oh yes, I wonder if there are any Leightons this year.” “Or Leader. Charles Leader. I think there is nothing more charming than those landscape scenes by Leader.” “I’ve got three bally weeks. I can see Hyde Park. We’ve got ages yet. It goes on being fascinating right down through Kensington and right on up to the other side of Putney Bridge.” “Dear me. Isn’t it fascinating after that?” “Oh, not all that awful walk along the Upper Richmond Road--not until our avenue begins--” 11 Miriam fumbled with the fastening of the low wide gate as her mother passed on up the drive. She waited until the footsteps were muffled by the fullness of the may trees linking their middle branches over the bend in the drive. Then she looked steadily down the sunflecked asphalted avenue along which they had just come. The level sunlight streamed along the empty roadway and the shadows of the lime trees lay across the path and up the oak palings. Her eyes travelled up and down the boles of the trees, stopping at each little stunted tuft of greenery. She could no longer hear her mother’s footsteps. There was a scented coolness in the shady watered garden. Leaning gently with her breast against the upper bars of the gate she broke away from the sense of her newly-made engagement. She scanned the whole length of the shrouded avenue from end to end and at last looked freely up amongst the interwoven lime trees. Long she watched, her eyes roaming from the closely-growing leaves where the green was densest to the edges of the trees where the light shone through. “Gold and green,” she whispered, “green and gold, held up by firm brown stems bathed in gold.”