Part 10 (2/2)
”I forget always which they are. Like this?”
She flung her arms up above her head, close together, so that she looked like a slender column. Then her body swayed and her delicate green dress quivered over it with the suggestion of countless leaves.
”My dear child!” exclaimed her lover.
”No: that is a silver birch,” said Ford,
”Oh, of course. Like this, then.” And she twitched up her skirts so that for a moment they spread out in great horizontal layers, like the layers of a beech.
We glanced at the house, but none of the servants were looking. So we laughed, and said she ought to go on the variety stage.
”Ah, this is the kind I like!” she cried, and practised the beech-tree again.
”I thought so,” said Mr. Worters. ”I thought so. Other Kingdom Copse is yours.”
”Mine----?” She had never had such a present in her life. She could not realize it.
”The purchase will be drawn up in your name. You will sign the deed.
Receive the wood, with my love. It is a second engagement ring.”
”But is it--is it mine? Can I--do what I like there?”
”You can,” said Mr. Worters, smiling.
She rushed at him and kissed him. She kissed Mrs. Worters. She would have kissed myself and Ford if we had not extruded elbows. The joy of possession had turned her head.
”It's mine! I can walk there, work there, live there. A wood of my own!
Mine for ever.”
”Yours, at all events, for ninety-nine years.”
”Ninety-nine years?” I regret to say there was a tinge of disappointment in her voice.
”My dear child! Do you expect to live longer?”
”I suppose I can't,” she replied, and flushed a little. ”I don't know.”
”Ninety-nine seems long enough to most people. I have got this house, and the very lawn you are standing on, on a lease of ninety-nine years.
Yet I call them my own, and I think I am justified. Am I not?”
”Oh, yes.”
”Ninety-nine years is practically for ever. Isn't it?”
”Oh, yes. It must be.”
Ford possesses a most inflammatory note-book. Outside it is labelled ”Private,” inside it is headed ”Practically a book.” I saw him make an entry in it now, ”Eternity: practically ninety-nine years.”
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