Then, to the immense relief of Mrs. Effie and myself, he was released
and we were driven quickly off from the raffish set. Through their
Regent and Bond streets we went, though I mean to say they were on an
unbelievably small or village scale, to an outlying region of detached
villas that doubtless would be their St. John's Wood, but my efforts
to observe closely were distracted by the extraordinary freedom with
which our driver essayed to chat with us, saying he "guessed" we were
glad to get back to God's country, and things of a similar intimate
nature. This was even more embarrassing to Mrs. Effie than it was to
me, since she more than once felt obliged to answer the fellow with a
feigned cordiality.
Relieved I was when we drew up before the town house of the Flouds.
Set well back from the driveway in a faded stretch of common, it was
of rather a garbled architecture, with the Tudor, late Gothic, and
French Renaissance so intermixed that one was puzzled to separate the
periods. Nor was the result so vast as this might sound. Hardly would
the thing have made a wing of the manor house at Chaynes-Wotten. The
common or small park before it was shielded from the main thoroughfare
by a fence of iron palings, and back of this on either side of a
gravelled walk that led to the main entrance were two life-sized stags
not badly sculptured from metal.
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