whistle before he turned to go home by the Avenue.

Ann Veronica forgot him as soon as she was through the gate, and her
face resumed its expression of stern preoccupation. "It's either now or
never," she said to herself....

Morningside Park was a suburb that had not altogether, as people say,
come off. It consisted, like pre-Roman Gaul, of three parts. There was
first the Avenue, which ran in a consciously elegant curve from the
railway station into an undeveloped wilderness of agriculture, with big,
yellow brick villas on either side, and then there was the pavement, the
little clump of shops about the post-office, and under the railway arch
was a congestion of workmen's dwellings. The road from Surbiton and
Epsom ran under the arch, and, like a bright fungoid growth in the
ditch, there was now appearing a sort of fourth estate of little
red-and-white rough-cast villas, with meretricious gables and very
brassy window-blinds. Behind the Avenue was a little hill, and an
iron-fenced path went over the crest of this to a stile under an
elm-tree, and forked there, with one branch going back into the Avenue
again.

"It's either now or never," said Ann Veronica, again ascending this
stile. "Much as I hate rows, I've either got to make a stand or give in
altogether."

She seated herself in a loose and easy attitude and surveyed the
backs of the Avenue houses; then her eyes wandered to where the new
red-and-white villas peeped among the trees. She seemed to be making
some sort of inventory. "Ye Gods!" she said at last. "WHAT a place!