Tout doux et you!”
“If Adam, or if Pontycroft were here...” she sighed, “I should be vastly
tempted---tout doux et you-,--to tempt either of them. Oh, see how the
rosy horizon is caught in its net woven of grey leafless branches!
The sky is a sumptuous Prussian blue and how it fades at the zenith to
palest azure! All the Royal colour is broken up by bold white clouds,
and--this--ah, this is far too fair a sight for one pair of eyes to
revel in alone. This cries, aloud, for Adam!”
Ruth looked about her. At her feet, oddly enough, curiously enough, a
red firm apple, forgotten there,--untouched by frosts,--at her feet lay
a fine red pippin. She picked it up, she smiled, she wondered....
“But--but--there's only you--old Puss! Here, catch it,” she cried to
Miranda, who came running towards her, scenting the game he loved. With
a gentle toss Ruth threw the apple along the turf and left Miranda to
the ecstatic enjoyment of patting it, pushing it and rolling over it for
quite eleven minutes.
V
Miss Adgate had Miranda's approbation for inoculating Oldbridge with
levity. She consulted General Adgate:
“Anything you like, Ruth. Anything you like to keep you here contented.”
And he was not in the least fired by her schemes and had nothing further
to say. But Miss Adgate sat down at this and scribbled fifty notes,
selecting her first guests from all the worlds held in the one London
World--the men, the women she liked, whose work she liked; the people
who could be irrelevant at a pinch, amused, amusing. She invited them
to visit her at Barracks Hill during the coming Summer, and in time she
received effusive acceptances to her invitations.