CHAPTER XII
VIVIE RETURNS
Honoria Armstrong, faithful in friendship and purpose as few people
are (though she abated never a whit her love for her dear, fierce,
blue-eyed, bristly-moustached, battle-scarred, bullying husband)
prepared for Vivie's return in the autumn of 1909 by securing for
her occupancy a nice little one-storeyed house in a Kensington back
street; one of those houses--I doubt not, now tenanted by
millionaires who don't want a large household, just a roof over
their heads--that remain over from the early nineteenth century,
when Kensington was emerging from a country village into villadom.
The broad, quiet road, named after our late dear Queen, has nothing
but these detached or semi-detached little _cottages ornes_,
one-storeyed villas with a studio behind, or two-storeyed components
of "terraces," for about a quarter of a mile; and just before the
War, building speculators were wont to pace its pavements with a
hungry gaze directed to left and right buying up in imagination all
this wasted space, pulling down these pretty stucco nests, and
building in their place castles of flats, high into the air. I don't
suppose this district will escape much longer the destruction of its
graceful flowering trees and vivid gardens, its air of an opulent
village; it will match with the rest of Kensingtonia in huge,
handsome buildings and be much sought after by the people who devote
their lives--till they commit suicide--to illicit love and the
Victory Balls at the Albert Hall.
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