“The only thing that’s really cheap,” said Harriet, “is meat. That huge piece cost two shillings. There’s nothing to do but to become savage and carnivorous—if you can.”
“The kangaroo and the dingo are the largest fauna in Australia,” said Somers. “And the dingo is probably introduced.”
“But it’s very good meat,” said Harriet.
“I know that,” said he.
The hedge between number fifty-one and number fifty was a rather weary hedge with a lot of dead branches in it, on the Somers’ side. Yet it grew thickly, with its dark green, slightly glossy leaves. And it had little pinky-green flowers just coming out: sort of pink pea-flowers. Harriet went nosing round for flowers. Their garden was just trodden grass with the remains of some bushes and a pumpkin vine. So she went picking sprigs from the intervening hedge, trying to smell a bit of scent in them, but failing. At one place the hedge was really thin, and so of course she stood to look through into the next patch.
“Oh, but these dahlias are really marvellous. You must come and look,” she sang out to Somers.
“Yes, I know, I’ve seen them,” he replied rather crossly, knowing that the neighbours would hear her. Harriet was so blithely unconscious of people on the other side of hedges. As far as she was concerned, they ought not to be there: even if they were in their own garden.
“You must come and look, though. Lovely! Real plum-colour, and the loveliest velvet. You must come.”
He left off sweeping the little yard, which was the job he had set himself for the moment, and walked across the brown grass to where Harriet stood peeping through the rift in the dead hedge, her head tied in a yellow, red-spotted duster. And of course, as Somers was peeping beside her, the neighbour who belonged to the garden must come backing out of the shed and shoving a motor-cycle down the path, smoking a short little pipe meanwhile. It was the man in blue overalls, the one named Jack. Somers knew him at once, though there were now no blue overalls. And the man was staring hard at the dead place in the hedge, where the faces of Harriet and Richard were seen peeping. Somers then behaved as usual on such occasions, just went stony and stared unseeing in another direction; as if quite unaware that the dahlias had an owner with a motor-cycle: any other owner than God, indeed. Harriet nodded a confused and rather distant “Good morning.” The man just touched his cap, very cursory, and nodded, and said good morning across his pipe, with his teeth clenched, and strode round the house with his machine.
“Why must you go yelling for other people to hear you?” said Somers to Harriet.
“Why shouldn’t they hear me!” retorted Harriet.
The day was Saturday. Early in the afternoon Harriet went to the little front gate because she heard a band: or the rudiments of a band. Nothing would have kept her indoors when she heard a trumpet, not six wild Somerses. It was some very spanking Boy Scouts marching out. There were only six of them, but the road was hardly big enough to hold them. Harriet leaned on the gate in admiration of their dashing broad hats and thick calves. As she stood there she heard a voice:
“Would you care for a few dahlias? I believe you like them.”
She started and turned. Bold as she was in private, when anybody addressed her in the open, any stranger, she wanted to bolt. But it was the fifty neighbour, the female neighbour, a very good-looking young woman, with loose brown hair and brown eyes and a warm complexion. The brown eyes were now alert with question and with offering, and very ready to be huffy, or even nasty, if the offering were refused. Harriet was too well-bred.
“Oh, thank you very much,” she said, “but isn’t it a pity to cut them.”
“Oh, not at all. My husband will cut you some with pleasure. Jack!—Jack!” she called.
“Hello!” came the masculine voice.
“Will you cut a few dahlias for Mrs—er—I don’t know your name”—she flashed a soft, warm, winning look at Harriet, and Harriet flushed slightly. “For the people next door,” concluded the offerer.
“Somers—S-O-M-E-R-S.” Harriet spelled it out.
“Oh, Somers!” exclaimed the neighbour woman, with a gawky little jerk, like a schoolgirl. “Mr. and Mrs. Somers,” she reiterated, with a little laugh.
“That’s it,” said Harriet.
“I saw you come yesterday, and I wondered—we hadn’t heard the name of who was coming.” She was still rather gawky and school-girlish in her manner, half shy, half brusque.
“No, I suppose not,” said Harriet, wondering why the girl didn’t tell her own name now.
“That’s your husband who has the motor-bike?” said Harriet.
“Yes, that’s right. That’s him. That’s my husband, Jack, Mr. Callcott.”
“Mr. Callcott, oh!” said Harriet, as if she were mentally abstracted trying to spell the word.
Somers, in the little passage inside his house, heard all this with inward curses. “That’s done it!” he groaned to himself. He’d got neighbours now.
And sure enough, in a few minutes came Harriet’s gushing cries of joy and admiration: “Oh, how lovely! how marvellous! but can they really be dahlias? I’ve never seen such dahlias! they’re really too beautiful! But you shouldn’t give them me, you shouldn’t.”
“Why not?” cried Mrs. Callcott in delight.
“So many. And isn’t it a pity to cut them?” This, rather wistfully, to the masculine silence of Jack.
“Oh no, they want cutting as they come, or the blooms gets smaller,” said Jack, masculine and benevolent.
“And scent!—they have scent!” cried Harriet, sniffing at her velvety bouquet.
“They have a little—not much though. Flowers don’t have much scent in Australia,” deprecated Mrs. Callcott.
“Oh, I must show them to my husband,” cried Harriet, half starting from the fence. Then she lifted up her voice:
“Lovat!” she called. “Lovat! You must come. Come here! Come and see! Lovat!”
“What?”
“Come. Come and see.”
This dragged the bear out of his den: Mr. Somers, twisting sour smiles of graciousness on his pale, bearded face, crossed the verandah and advanced towards the division fence, on the other side of which stood his Australian neighbour in shirt-sleeves, with a comely young wife very near to him, whilst on this side stood Harriet with a bunch of pink and purple ragged dahlias, and an expression of joyous friendliness, which Somers knew to be false, upon her face.
“Look what Mrs. Callcott has given me! Aren’t they exquisite?” cried Harriet, rather exaggerated.
“Awfully nice,” said Somers, bowing slightly to Mrs. Callcott, who looked uneasy, and to Mr. Callcott—otherwise Jack.
“Got here all right in the hansom, then?” said Jack.
Somers laughed—and he could be charming when he laughed—as he met the other man’s eye.
“My wrist got tired, propping up the luggage all the way,” he replied.
“Ay, there’s not much waste ground in a hansom. You can’t run up a spare bed in the parlour, so to speak. But it saved you five bob.”
“Oh, at least ten, between me and a Sydney taxi driver.”
“Yes,