Act IV

[Man's most pleasant invention is the lawn-mower. All the birds know
this, and that is why, when it is at rest, there is always at least
one of them sitting on the handle with his head cocked, wondering how
the delicious whirring sound is made. When they find out, they will
change their note. As it is, you must sometimes have thought that you
heard the mower very early in the morning, and perhaps you peeped in
neglige from your lattice window to see who was up so early. It was
really the birds trying to get the note.

On this broiling morning, however, we are at noon, and whoever looks
will see that the whirring is done by Mr. Venables. He is in a linen
suit with the coat discarded (the bird is sitting on it), and he
comes and goes across the Comtesse's lawns, pleasantly mopping his
face. We see him through a crooked bowed window generously open,
roses intruding into it as if to prevent its ever being closed at
night; there are other roses in such armfuls on the tables that one
could not easily say where the room ends and the garden begins.

In the Comtesse's pretty comic drawing-room (for she likes the comic
touch when she is in England) sits John Shand with his hostess, on
chairs at a great distance from each other. No linen garments for
John, nor flannels, nor even knickerbockers; he envies the English
way of dressing for trees and lawns, but is too Scotch to be able to
imitate it; he wears tweeds, just as he would do in his native
country where they would be in kilts. Like many another Scot, the
first time he ever saw a kilt was on a Sassenach; indeed kilts were
perhaps invented, like golf, to draw the English north. John is doing
nothing, which again is not a Scotch accomplishment, and he looks
rather miserable and dour. The Comtesse is already at her Patience
cards, and occasionally she smiles on him as if not displeased with
his long silence. At last she speaks:]

COMTESSE. I feel it rather a shame to detain you here on such a
lovely day, Mr. Shand, entertaining an old woman.

JOHN. I don't pretend to think I'm entertaining you, Comtesse.

COMTESSE. But you ARE, you know.

JOHN. I would be pleased to be told how?

[She shrugs her impertinent shoulders, and presently there is another
heavy sigh from JOHN.]

COMTESSE. Again! Why do not you go out on the river?

JOHN. Yes, I can do that. [He rises.]

COMTESSE. And take Sybil with you. [He sits again.] No?

JOHN. I have been on the river with her twenty times.

COMTESSE. Then take her for a long walk through the Fairloe woods.

JOHN. We were there twice last week.

COMTESSE. There is a romantically damp little arbour at the end of
what the villagers call the Lovers' Lane.