"What a lovely scheme!" Vera exclaimed enthusiastically.
It appealed to her. It appealed to all that was romantic in her
bird-like soul. She did not see the links; she did not see the lake; she
just saw herself in exquisite frocks, lightly lounging on the balcony in
high summer, and dreaming of her own beauty.
"And have a striped awning," she said.
"Yes," he said. "Make Stephen do it."
"I will," she said.
At that moment Stephen came in, with his bald head and his forty years.
"I say!" he demanded. "What are you up to?"
"We were just watching the skaters," said Vera.
"And the wonders of the night," said Charlie, chuckling
characteristically. He always laughed at himself. He was a philosopher.
He and Stephen had been fast friends from infancy.
"Well, you'd just better skate downstairs," said Stephen. (No romance in
Stephen! He was netting a couple of thousand a year out of the
manufacture of toilet-sets, in all that smoke to the north. How could
you expect him to be romantic?)
"Charlie was saying how nice it would be for me to have a French window
here, and a marble balcony," Vera remarked. It had not taken her long to
think of marble.
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