If you have a bishop or an antiquary or something of
that sort coming to lunch you just mention the fact when you are ordering
the garden, and you get an old-world pleasaunce, with clipped yew hedges
and a sun-dial and hollyhocks, and perhaps a mulberry tree, and borders
of sweet-williams and Canterbury bells, and an old-fashioned beehive or
two tucked away in a corner. Those are the ordinary lines of supply that
the Oasis Association undertakes, but by paying a few guineas a year
extra you are entitled to its emergency E.O.N. service."
"What on earth is an E.O.N. service?"
"It's just a conventional signal to indicate special cases like the
incursion of Gwenda Pottingdon. It means you've got some one coming to
lunch or dinner whose garden is alleged to be 'the envy of the
neighbourhood.'"
"Yes," exclaimed Elinor, with some excitement, "and what happens then?"
"Something that sounds like a miracle out of the Arabian Nights. Your
backyard becomes voluptuous with pomegranate and almond trees, lemon
groves, and hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble-
basined fountains, in which chestnut-and-white pond-herons step daintily
amid exotic water-lilies, while golden pheasants strut about on alabaster
terraces.
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