"Besides, hydrangeas always remind me of Mr. James Turner," she said in parenthesis.
"He isn't he--he's it. It's a little art gentleman, plump, like a bullfinch, with a little grey moustache. You must know him, because, when one lunches or dines out, he is invariably there, and he is invariably the one person whom one can't remember. Hydrangeas remind me of him, because he looks as if he had been grown in a pot in a moderately warm greenhouse. He is like a hydrangea beginning to get stout, just as those dreadful shrubs are. He always opens conversation by saying that I cut him the other day in Bond Street. I explain that I didn't see him, which is quite true. I never can see him."
The florist had removed all the hydrangeas except a small group that screened the centre of the grate. These were the "choicest," and he waited for further orders.
"No, take them all away," called out Lady Thurso. "All, every one. Isn't it so, Ruby?"
Ruby put her head on one side and looked.
"Yes, quite right," she said. "I wish you wouldn't always be right. Nobody else would have thought of having nothing there."
"Because people don't see the value of empty places," said she. "They want to fill everything up--the walls, the fireplaces, the hours, everything. Oh, think of the unemployed! How nice it sounds! One works and subscribes and does all kinds of things for them, but if only they would be as kind, and work for the employed, so that they might be unemployed! Fancy having time to do nothing at all! That is the condition which I envy, though, of course, if it were offered me, like so many things I envy, I would not accept it, because it would mean parting with my individuality. But I would really give any sum to be able to buy a couple of hours this afternoon."
"Why, to be unemployed. I want to sit in a chair and doze if I like. No, I think that would be waste; but for two hours to feel that I had nothing whatever to do. Who was it--Queen Elizabeth, I think--who said she wanted to be a milkmaid? Don't you understand? I understand that enormously. I would even be a hydrangea, and stand in a pot, or be Mr. James Turner in his curator's room, with nothing to do until it is closing time. Instead, I am supposed to belong to the leisured classes, and never have a moment. No ferns, either," she called to the florist--"nothing at all."