XXII 



YESTERDAY Lola's family motored 'energetically some 

 fifty miles and back to a garden party near London. 

 A wonderful house with wonderful lawns and gardens-^ 

 one feels that the hideous tide of brick and mortar must 

 inevitably sweep over and destroy it before another 

 generation comes and goes, so that there is a kind of 

 pathos in its very beauty. 



Out of the unlovely mean streets along which the tram- 

 line runs its abominable way, one turns off into the cool 

 country road. The long avenue is bordered by wide fields 

 where, as we passed yesterday, the new-mown grass was 

 lying in silver furrows. The country is quite flat,- but the 

 richness of the green, the incidents of lake and timber, 

 give it a placid English fairness of its own. 

 The Lady of Villino Loki went with a keen 

 eye to garden hints, and her first thrill was a 

 Honeysuckle screen in the little garden of the 

 second lodge. Such a Honeysuckle screen ! 

 It had once, she supposes, been an arch, for 

 it rose to a kind of gable peak in the centre, 

 but it was filled in either by design or natural 

 luxuriance till it was a complete mass of bloom, 

 a solid wall of blossom. Never had she beheld 

 such a thing before. She wants Honeysuckle 

 at the Villino, as she said already, and she is 

 fired with fresh enthusiasm. Why should she 

 not have a hedge of Honeysuckle, not too far 

 from the house itself? It is settled. She will buy 

 fifty in November and try. 



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