A little curiosity perhaps lingered in Madge's face when she met Philip, and certainly the contempt all vanished. She had a great respect and liking for him, and her whole expression brightened when she saw him. Then after greetings they strolled on, the two elder ladies in front.
"Mother has a great many questions to ask you," she said to him in a gentle, slow, but very audible voice. "She wants to know how many gardeners you have, why you don't cut your roses back and something about South African mines."
Philip's habit of neatness and instinct of gardening led him to stop a moment and nip off a couple of ill-localised buds from a rose. In effect the two others got a little further ahead of them. This may or may not have been intentional.
"All my information is at her service," he said--"particularly on the subject of roses, about which I know more than South African mines."
"Infinitely more. Are they not clearly more attractive?"
"I believe you really think so," she said. "And that is so odd. Doesn't the scheming, the calculation, the foresight required in financial things interest you enormously?"
"Certainly; but I scheme just as much over the roses. Whether this one is to have--well, a whisky-and-soda, or whether it is rheumatic and wants a lowering treatment; that is just as interesting in itself as whether South Africans want lowering or screwing up."
"You mean you can do that? You can send things up or down? You can say to us, to mother: 'You shall be poorer to-morrow or richer'?"
"I suppose so, to some extent. Pray don't let us talk about it. It sounds rather brutal, and I am afraid it is brutalising. Yet, after all, a landlord may put up the rent of his houses."
Madge Ellington walked on for a few paces without replying.
"How odd of you," she said at length, "not to feel the fascination of power. I don't mean to say that one would necessarily want to use it, but it must be so divine to know it is there. Well, if you wish, I won't talk about it."
Philip turned to her, his brown thin face looking suddenly eager.
"Ah, I would sooner hear you talk about what you please than about what I please," he said.
"Can't I manage to combine the two?" she said. "The river, for instance, I think we both love that. Will you promise to let me live on the river while I am here?"