Her Country
9781465680426
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Out on the edge of the city were large places, screened from the road by hedges which had been fifty, a hundred years sometimes, in the growing. Behind one such lay a sunshiny garden, lovely in the June Sunday morning. Down the gravel of a path a girl in a white frock walked, swinging a shallow basket in which scissors rattled from side to side. The girl kept a critical eye, walking, on the wall of Dorothy Perkins roses which, growing over a tall broken lattice, separated the garden from the grounds next door. “You adorable nobodies, you’re like pink music,” she addressed the million little blooms, and halted, erect and poised, glorying in flowers and sunlight. Two men watched her. “A colt,” spoke the older, smiling lazily. “I don’t know. I like long, adolescent lines. You don’t see them after eighteen. Honor’s seventeen. I like her figure.” “Figure! As much figure as a string.” The older man leaned back in his wicker chair and gazed through half-closed lids at the girl, much like a tall, thin angel of Botticelli, shimmering white against shimmering pink. With that she turned and came lightly towards them across the grass. “What do you think? Is there anything here fit to send McIvor?” “Why it’s all lovely, Honor—our rose-garden,” the boy said, looking at her in surprise. “Fit to send him! Why, the Mannering rose-garden’s famous. Has been for a hundred years—isn’t it a hundred years, father?” “Near enough.” Eric Mannering, the fifth, knocked the ashes from his cigar and considered the end of it with absorption. “What’s the matter with the roses, Honor?” He was half amused, half bored. “Why aren’t they good enough for—McIvor, the singer?” “Nothing’s good enough for McIvor, the singer,” the girl shot at him, quoting the half-contemptuous tone as well as the words. “The roses used to be wonderful, of course. You say they were a show when you were a youngster. But—why, you know better than I do, dad, that roses are an expensive accomplishment. The fine ones are run out; it’s only the hardy ordinary ones that live through neglect. They’re sweet and adorable, but they’re—well, commonplace.”
