He said: "Do have the 'lend' of our hose to do the rest of them, won't you?" And thereupon he stretched out a long, white-sleeved arm over the railings and put the end of the hose straight into my hand. "Oh, thank you; but I will not trouble you. Good evening." Of course, that would have been the thing to say, icily, before I walked off. Unfortunately I only got as far as "Oh, thank you----" And then my fingers must have fumbled the tap on or something. Anyhow, a great spray of water immediately poured forth from out of the hose through the roses and the trellis, right on to the fair head and the face of the young man next door. "Oh!" I cried, scarlet with embarrassment. "I beg your pardon----" "It's quite all right, thanks," he said. "Most refreshing!" Here I realised that I was still giving him a shower-bath all the time. Then we both laughed heartily together. It was the first good laugh I'd had for months! And then I trained the hose off him at last and on to our border, while the young man, watching me from over the palings, said quickly: "I've been wanting to talk to you, do you know? I've been wanting to ask----" Well, I suppose I shall never know now, what he wanted to ask. For that was the moment when there broke upon the peaceful evening air the sound of a voice from the back window of our drawing-room, calling in outraged accents: "Beatrice! Bee--atrice!" Immediately all the laughter went out of me. "Y--yes, Aunt Anastasia," I called back. In my agitation I dropped the end of the hose on to the ground, where it began irrigating the turf and my four-and-elevenpenny shoes at the same time. "Beatrice, come in here instantly," called my aunt in a voice there was no gainsaying. So, leaving the hose where it lay, and without another glance at the trellis, in I dashed through the French window into our drawing-room. A queer mixture of a room it is. So like us; so typical of our circumstances! A threadbare carpet and the cheapest bamboo easy-chairs live cheek-by-jowl with a priceless Chippendale cabinet from Lovelace Court, holding a few pieces of china that represent the light of other days. Upon the faded cheap wallpaper there hangs the pride of our home, the Gainsborough portrait of one chestnut-haired, slim-throated ancestress, Lady Anastasia Lovelace, in white muslin and a blue sash, painted on the terrace steps at Lovelace Court. This was the background to the figure of my Aunt Anastasia, who stood, holding herself as stiff as a poker (she is very nearly as slim, even though she's fifty-three) in her three-year-old grey alpaca gown with the little eightpence-three-farthings white collar fastened by her pearl brooch with granny's hair in it. Her face told me what to expect. A heated flush, and no lips. One of Auntie's worst tempers!