"I want," I said, mopping my brows with the disengaged hand, "to see some hose."
"Certainly, Sir," he replied with a beaming smile. "For wear on the feet, I presume?"
"Not at all," I replied as coolly as possible. "For shampooing the head."
"I want it to water my pinks with," I explained.
A look of divine condescension overspread his features. "Ah, you require our horticultural department for that, Sir," he said. "Fourth to the left, fifth to the right, and ask again." And with an infinitely horticultured gesture of the hand he motioned me on.
After a long and adventurous Odyssey and fifteen fruitless appeals I sighted a kind of green island shore, where a young man stood in an attitude of _hauteur_, surrounded by a number of pink and grey snakes and brightly coloured agricultural machines.
Making my way to him I sank exhausted into a wheel-barrow and murmured my request again.
"About what size is your garden?" he asked me when I had partially recovered.
"Slim," I said, "slim and graceful, but not really tall. _Petite_ I believe is the technical term. What sizes have you got in stock?"
"Perhaps about forty yards would do, Sir," he suggested, uncoiling a portion of one of the reptiles at his feet. "I can recommend this as a strong and thoroughly reliable article. Then you will want a union, I suppose, and a brass nozzle and a drum."
"We all want union nowadays so much in everything, don't we?" I agreed pleasantly, "but I'm not so sure about the drum. You see the baby makes a most infernal noise as it is with a----"
He interrupted me to explain the uses of these things. The union, it seemed, was a kind of garter to attach the hose to the tap, and the drum was where the snake wound itself to sleep at night. "And the little pepper-castor, of course," I said, "is what one puts at the end to make it sneeze. I understand completely. If you will have them all sent round to me to-morrow I will pay on delivery."
When I got out into the street I found that a great change had taken place. The sky overhead was black with imminent rain. A sharp shower pattered at my heels as I sprinted for the 'bus, and when I disembarked from it the gutters were gurgling with ill-concealed delight. As I walked up the garden I noticed that the majority of the pinks were lying in a drunken stupor upon their beds.