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THE OLD KENT ROAD
55
smiled, which took away the sting and added honey.
In such high spirits our friends shook the dust of the old Kentish highroad; with the same exuberant souls they invaded the villa of the late respected Mr. John Simmonds of Camberwell. It was a pleasant and unpretentious place, with well-clipped boxwood hedges, and a rose garden that showed the taste of its last owner. Of their brief soj ourn in this quiet retreat I have the most incomplete record, such as the awe, not unmixed with dismay, that the first appearance of the cream-colored top hat created, and its ridiculous incongruity, perched above checkered shirt-sleeves, in the garden. Mr. Simmonds was never separated from it; he took it as a sine qua non of high estate ; he even donned it in his banishment. But I am getting ahead of my story.
From the halfhidden windows of the Camberwell villa many smart traps, driven by nabobs of fashion, could be glimpsed going perpetually away from London. It was as if the parks, becoming overheated from surplus fashion, had given them off like so many sparks from a forge. Young men in flannels, and on bicycles, flew swiftly by; perambulators, housing wealthy young, pushed by their gate
SUE DISCOVERS AN IMPORTANT DOCUMENT
posts ; yet one young man was strangely missing. Mr. Simmonds sat and waited for him with Indian patience. The cruel words with which he would greet his awed approach lay burning on his tongue. Sue, too, must have wondered, and have missed his broad shoulders and sheltering hand as the aristocratic sunsets bathed her rose garden. For at these times she was alone, and was wont to snip off flowers for the mansion's adornment.
On one such late afternoon, just softening into twilight, Bill stood haloed in soft cream tints, by the entrance way. Sue was in her garden. An armful of red roses clasped to her bosom bore, witness of her activity. She turned to go, when a rustling of leaves, in branches sudd e n 1 y released, startled her. Her alarm was increased as the body of an active man came sliding and bounding down from his lookout in a thick oak overlooking her garden. He landed, somehow, on his feet, and made violent gestures of caution to her. There was no mistaking him now: it was Harry Gethings, the coster of Old Kent Road, come to spy upon their privacy.
Yet Sue, strange creature, weighed not this insult at all; instead, she glanced toward her father's dimming back in the gathering dusk, and went toward her erstwhile suitor.