"Yes—you did, didn't you! … She has gone out to make some duty calls, and I didn't go. I had something to write. I write a little, you know."
"Reely!" said Kipps.
"It's nothing much," she said, "and it comes to nothing." She glanced at a little desk near the window, on which there lay some paper. "One must do something." She broke off abruptly. "Have you seen our outlook?" she asked and walked to the window, and Kipps came and stood beside her. "We look on the Square. It might be worse, you know. That outporter's truck there is horrid—and the railings, but it's better than staring one's social replica in the face, isn't it? It's pleasant in early spring—bright green, laid on with a dry brush—and it's pleasant in autumn."
"I like It," said Kipps. "That laylock there is pretty, isn't it?"
"Children come and pick it at times," she remarked.
"I dessay they do," said Kipps.
He rested on his hat and stick and looked appreciatively out of the window, and she glanced at him for one swift moment. A suggestion that might have come from the Art of Conversing came into his head. "Have you a garden?" he said.
She shrugged her shoulders. "Only a little one," she said, and then, "perhaps you would like to see it."
"I like gardenin'," said Kipps, with memories of a
