Page:Hichens - The Green Carnation.djvu/96

88 I am thankful to say. I have broken up the idle corners permanently, and checked the Sunday evening rowdyism upon the common."

"Indeed! I am so glad. Mr. Smith has broken up the idle corners, Madame Valtesi. Is it not a mercy?"

Madame Valtesi looked enigmatical, as indeed she always did when she was ignorant. She had not the smallest idea what an idle corner might be, nor how it could be broken up. She therefore peered through her eyeglasses and said nothing. Mr. Amarinth was less discreet.

"An idle corner," he said. "What a delicious name. It might have been invented by Izaac Walton. It suggests a picture by George Morland. I love his canvases, rustics carousing"

But before he could get any further, Reggie caught his eye and formed silently with his lips the words, "Remember my anthem."

"He idealises so much," Amarinth went on easily. "Of course a real carouse is horribly inartistic. Excess always is, although Oscar Wilde has said that nothing succeeds like it."

"Excess is very evil," Mr. Smith said rather rigidly. "Excess in everything seems to be characteristic of our age. I could wish that