tweed hat
on the back of his head. The sun shone on the blue sea, and the blue sea
was trim and neat.
After luncheon they went to Hove to see the woman who was to take charge
of the baby. She lived in a small house in a back street, but it was clean
and tidy. Her name was Mrs. Harding. She was an elderly, stout person,
with gray hair and a red, fleshy face. She looked motherly in her cap, and
Philip thought she seemed kind.
"Won't you find it an awful nuisance to look after a baby?" he asked her.
She explained that her husband was a curate, a good deal older than
herself, who had difficulty in getting permanent work since vicars wanted
young men to assist them; he earned a little now and then by doing locums
when someone took a holiday or fell ill, and a charitable institution gave
them a small pension; but her life was lonely, it would be something to do
to look after a child, and the few shillings a week paid for it would help
her to keep things going. She promised that it should be well fed.
"Quite the lady, isn't she?" said Mildred, when they went away.
They went back to have tea at the Metropole. Mildred liked the crowd and
the band. Philip was tired of talking, and he watched her face as she
looked with keen eyes at the dresses of the women who came in. She had a
peculiar sharpness for reckoning up what things cost, and now and then she
leaned over to him and whispered the result of her meditations.
"D'you see that aigrette there? That cost every bit of seven guineas."
Or: "Look at that ermine, Philip. That's rabbit, that is--that's not
ermine." She laughed triumphantly. "I'd know it a mile off."
Philip smiled happily. He was glad to see her pleasure, and the
ingenuousness of her conversation amused and touched him. The band played
sentimental music.
After dinner they walked down to the station, and Philip took her arm. He
told her what arrangements he had made for their journey to France. She
was to come up to London at the end of the week, but she told him that she
could not go away till the Saturday of the week after that. He had already
engaged a room in a hotel in Paris. He was looking forward eagerly to
taking the tickets.
"You won't mind going second-class, will you? We mustn't be extravagant,
and it'll be all the better if we can do ourselves pretty well when we get
there."
He had talked to her a hundred times of the Quarter. They would wander
through its pleasant old streets, and th
|