Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/33

 the City, and affected a cultured urbanity that somehow disconcerted and always annoyed Ann Veronica's father extremely. He did not play golf, but took his exercise on horseback, which was also unsympathetic.

"Stuffy these trees make the Avenue," said Mr. Stanley as they drew alongside, to account for his own ruffled and heated expression. "They ought to have been lopped in the spring."

"There's plenty of time," said Ramage. "Is Miss Stanley coming up with us?"

"I go second," she said, "and change at Wimbledon."

"We'll all go second," said Ramage, "if we may?"

Mr. Stanley wanted to object strongly, but as he could not immediately think how to put it, he contented himself with a grunt, and the motion was carried. "How's Mrs. Ramage?" he asked.

"Very much as usual," said Ramage. "She finds lying up so much very irksome. But, you see, she has to lie up."

The topic of his invalid wife bored him, and he turned at once to Ann Veronica. "And where are you going?" he said. "Are you going on again this winter with that scientific work of yours? It's an instance of heredity, I suppose." For a moment Mr. Stanley almost liked Ramage. "You're a biologist, aren't you?"

He began to talk of his own impressions of biology as a commonplace magazine reader who had to get what he could from the monthly reviews, and was glad to meet with any information from nearer the fountainhead. In a little while he and she were talking quite easily and agreeably. They went on talking in the train—it seemed to her father a slight want of deference