ten marmalade. He mastered
it, and said:

"That jury are a rum lot."

His wife's eyelids flickered. "I wish women sat on juries."

"Why?"

"It would be an experience."

Not the first time she had used that curious expression! Yet her life
was far from dull, so far as he could see; with the new interests created
by the war, and the constant calls on her time made by the perfection of
their home life, she had a useful and busy existence. Again the random
thought passed through him: 'But she never tells me anything!' And
suddenly that lugubrious khaki-clad figure started up among the rose
bushes. "We've got a lot to be thankful for!" he said abruptly. "I must
go to work!" His wife, raising one eyebrow, smiled. "And I to weep!"
Mr. Bosengate laughed--she had a pretty wit! And stroking his comely
moustache where it had been kissed, he moved out into the sunshine. All
the evening, throughout his labours, not inconsiderable, for this jury
business had put him behind time, he was afflicted by that restless
pleasure in his surroundings; would break off in mowing the lower lawn to
look at the house through the trees; would leave his study and committee
papers, to cross into the drawing-room and sniff its dainty fragrance;
paid a special good-night visit to the children having supper in the
schoolroom; pottered in and out from his dressing room to admire his wife
while she was changing for dinner; dined with his mind perpetually on the
next course; talked volubly of the war; and in the billiard room
afterwards, smoking the pipe which had taken the place of his cigar,
could not keep still, but roamed about, now in conservatory, now in the
drawing-room, where his wife and the governess were still making swabs.
It seemed to him that he could not have enough of anything. About eleven
o'clock he strolled out beautiful night, only just dark enough--under the
new arrangement with Time--and went down to the little round fountain
below the terrace. His wife was playing the piano. Mr. Bosengate looked
at the water and the flat dark water lily leaves which floated there;
looked up at the house, where only narrow chinks of light showed, because
of the Lighting Order. The dreamy music drifted out; there was a scent
of heliotrope. He moved a few steps back, and sat in the children's
swing under an old lime tree. Jolly--blissful--in the warm, bloomy dark!
Of all hours of the day, this before going to bed was perhaps the
pl