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24 down the south front of the Tudor house a deep riband of flower-bed, all colour, gleamed and glowed in the summer sun. Sweet-peas were there in huge fragrant groups, stately hollyhocks, with flowers looking as if they had been cut out of thin paper by a master hand, played chaperon from the back; carnations were in a swoon of languid fragrance, love-lies-bleeding drooped its velvety spires, and a border of pansies wagged their silly faces as the wind passed over them. Behind, round the windows of the lower story, great clusters of clematis, like large purple sponges, blossomed, miraculously fed through their thin, dry stalks. At some distance off, in Winchester probably, which pricked the blue haze of heat with dim spires, a church bell came muffled and languid, and at the sound Mrs. Massington smiled.

she said. she concluded broadly.

said a voice, which apparently came from two shins and a knee in a basket-chair.

said Sybil.

said Bertie.

The tennis-shoe descended, and the chair creaked.

said he.

she said. That makes one feel so like a commercial traveller. The worst of it is neither you nor I have got any wares to offer except