Mrs. Ames by E. F. Benson

sandcastles.’
    Harry was tired, and did not proceed to crush Mr Pettit with the atheistical arguments that were but commonplace to the Omar Khayyam Club. He was not worth argument: you could only really argue with the enlightened people who fundamentally agreed with you, and he was sure that Mr Pettit did not fulfil that requirement. So, indulgently, he turned to Mrs Altham.
    â€˜I saw you at Mrs Evans’ garden party yesterday,’ he said. ‘I think she is the most wonderful person I ever met. She was dining here last night, and I took her into the garden - ’
    â€˜And showed her the roses,’ said Mrs Altham, unable to restrain herself.
    Harry became a parody of himself, though that might seem to be a feat of insuperable difficulty.
    â€˜I supposed it would get about,’ he said. ‘That is the worst of a little place like this. Whatever you do is instantly known.’
    The slightly viscous remains of the strawberry ice were being handed, and Mr Pettit was talking to Mrs Ames and his sister from a pitiably Christian standpoint.
    â€˜What did you hear?’ asked Harry, in a low voice.
    â€˜Merely that she and you went out into the garden after dinner, and that you picked roses for her - ’
    Harry pushed back his lank hair with his bony hand.
    â€˜You have heard all,’ he said. ‘There was nothing more than that. I did not see her home. Her carriage did not come: there was some mistake about it, I suppose. But it was my father who saw her home, not I.’
    He laid down the spoon with which he had been consuming the viscous fluid.
    â€˜If you hear that I saw her home, Mrs Altham,’ he said, ‘tell them it is not true. From what you have already told me, I gather there is talk going on. There is no reason for such talk.’
    He paused a moment, and then a line or two of the intensely Swinburnian effusion which he had written last night fermented in his head, making him infinitely more preposterous.
    â€˜I assure you that at present there is no reason for such talk,’ he said earnestly.
    Now Mrs Altham, with her wide interest in all that concerned anybody else, might be expected to feel the intensest curiosity on such a topic, but somehow she felt very little, since she knew that behind the talk there was really very little topic, and the gallant misgivings of poor, ugly Harry seemed to her destitute of any real thrill. On the other hand, she wanted very much to know where Major Ames was, and being endowed with the persistence of the household cat, which you may turn out of a particular armchair a hundred times, without producing the slightest discouragement in its mind, she reverted to her own subject again.
    â€˜I am sure there is no reason for such talk, Mr Harry,’ she said, with strangely unwelcome conviction, ‘and I will be sure to contradict it if ever I hear it. I am so glad to hear Major Ames is not ill. I was afraid that his absence from lunch today might mean that he was.’
    Now Harry, as a matter of fact, had no idea where his father was, since the telephone message had been received by Mrs Ames.
    â€˜Father is quite well,’ he said. ‘He was picking sweet peas half the morning. He picked a great bunch.’
    Mrs Altham looked round: the table was decorated with the roses of the dinner party of the evening before.
    â€˜Then where are the sweet peas?’ she asked.
    But Harry was not in the least interested in the question.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps they are in the next room. I showed Mrs Evans last night how the La France roses looked blue when dusk fell. She had never noticed it, though they turn as blue as her eyes.’
    â€˜How curious!’ said Mrs Altham. ‘But I didn’t see the sweet peas in the next room. Surely if there had been a quantity of them I should have noticed them. Or perhaps they are in the drawing room.’
    At this moment, Mrs Ames’ voice was