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 dully how a garden could have a fit; she thought an epileptic garden must be very horrid. But she said smoothly, "Ah! in London you have only walls and roofs, I think."

"You have been there, Miss Wu, of course?" Mrs. Gregory asked.

"I have never been to any country."

"Really? But—you must excuse me—but your excellent English."

"My honorable teacher was English. My honorable father knows it like you; he has been there—to Oxford."

"Really! I was born at Oxford. And my son"—she turned to him a little, meaning to coax him into the talk, and wondering to see him stand so awkwardly and wordless—he was not often so socially inept, and never gauche—"my son was there."

"And my honorable father has taught me to esteem English people because they are all"—she paused an instant, but she did not glance towards Basil, and added with a grave, deferential smile—"all honorable men."

"Well"—Basil's mother smiled too, a prettily pathetic smile which was half good manners and half sincere—"I am afraid there are a few exceptions, sometimes." She went up to her boy and laid her hand fondly on his arm. "But"—not speaking to him, but still to Nang—"it is the duty of all Englishmen to live up to such a high reputation."

"I must be off, Mother," the man said hurriedly, releasing himself gently, "if Miss Wu will excuse me. I thought Father was coming."

"He has. We left them down by the fish-pond, him and Tom, talking to a quaint old gardener."

"Oh! Well, I'm afraid I ought to be off—to the office.