And he stuck flowers in the hair of his own body, and wound a bit of creeping-jenny round his penis, and stuck a single bell of a hyacinth in his navel. She watched him with amusement, his odd intentness. And she pushed a campion flower in his moustache, where it stuck, dangling under his nose.
“This is John Thomas marryin’ Lady Jane,” he said. “An’ we mun let Constance an’ Oliver go their ways. Maybe—”
He spread out his hand with a gesture, and then he sneezed, sneezing away the flowers from his nose and his navel. He sneezed again.
“Maybe what?” she said, waiting for him to go on.
He looked at her a little bewildered.
“Eh?” he said.
“Maybe what? Go on with what you were going to say,” she insisted.
“Ay, what was I going to say?”
He had forgotten. And it was one of the disappointments of her life, that he never finished.
A yellow ray of sun shone over the trees.
“Sun!” he said. “And time you went. Time, my lady, time! What’s that as flies without wings, your ladyship? Time! Time!”
He reached for his shirt.
“Say good night! to John Thomas,” he said, looking down at his penis. “He’s safe in the arms of creeping-jenny! Not much burning pestle about him just now.”
And he put his flannel shirt over his head.