“Now come along, Mr Pickwick,” she was saying, as though talking to a small boy. “I won’t have you pretending you are too tired to take a walk. It’ll do you good. If I carry you everywhere you won’t have any legs to walk with.”

Mr Pickwick had gone on strike. He was lying on the veranda as though trying to reach the veranda roof with his paws. His slave gave him up and joined her guest.

Together they admired the roses and the many choice gladioli, pausing here and there whilst Miss Pinkney discoursed upon them and her flowering shrubs. Eventually they came to the vegetable garden at the rear of the house, and it was here that Mr Pickwick joined them, arriving at top speed and ending up in a plum-tree.

“You don’t tendall this garden yourself, do you?” Bony inquired, his brows fractionally raised.

“I do all the planting and most of the hoeing,” he was informed. “I have a man who comes in now and then to dig and trim and cut wood for me. He typifies the new generation.”

“Indeed! In what way?”

“In giving as little as he can for as much as he can get. My brother, however, used to manage him very well by setting him a good example. My brother used to work very hard. Perhaps if he hadn’t worked so hard he would be alive today. Thrombosis claimed him, poor man. You would have liked him. So downright in his opinions. So-so forceful in his language. Let’s go on and I’ll show you the place next door. Mrs Blake has been away for ten days and her cook, I think, has gone to the pictures at Warburton.”

Miss Pinkney led the way along the narrow cinder path separating the beds of peas and carrots and parsnips and greens of all kinds. They skirted the rows of currant and gooseberry bushes and entered the early shadows cast by the line of lilac-trees masking the rear fence. This fence was built of narrow boards and was six feet high. Here and there a board was loose, and a coat of paint was indicated.