He flung himself on the grass, talking to both the
ladies of the incidents and absurdities of Cabinet-making, with a
freedom and fun, an abandonment of anxiety and care that made him young
again. Nobody mentioned a newspaper.
Presently Chide, who had now taken the part of general adviser to Diana,
which had once been filled by Marsham, strolled off with her to look at
a greenhouse in need of repairs. Mrs. Colwood was called in by some
household matter. Ferrier was left alone.
As usual, he had a book in his pocket. This time it was a volume of
selected essays, ranging from Bacon to Carlyle. He began lazily to turn
the pages, smiling to himself the while at the paradoxes of life. Here,
for an hour, he sat under the limes, drunk with summer breezes and
scents, toying with a book, as though he were some "indolent
irresponsible reviewer"--some college fellow in vacation--some wooer of
an idle muse. Yet dusk that evening would find him once more in the
Babel of London. And before him lay the most strenuous, and, as he
hoped, the most fruitful passage of his political life. Broadstone, too,
was an old man; the Premiership itself could not be far away.
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