This visit to the Duke was the first time Jherek and Amelia had emerged into society since they had built their new house. Amelia was astonished by the rapid changes: there were only a few small areas no longer altered, and there was a certain freshness to everything which made even the most bizarre inventions almost charming. The air itself, she said, had the sweet sharpness of a spring morn. On the way home they saw Lord Jagged of Canaria in his great flying swan, a yellowish white, with another tall figure beside him. Jherek brought his locomotive alongside and hailed him, at once recognizing the other occupant of the swan.
"My dear Nurse! What a pleasure to meet you again! How are your children?"
Nurse was considerably more coherent than she had been when Jherek had last seen her. She shook her old steel head and sighed. "Gone, I fear. Back to an earlier point in Time — where I still operate the time-loop, where they still play as, doubtless, they will always play."
"You sent them back?"
"I did. I judged this world too dangerous for my little ones, young Jerry. Well, I must say, you're looking well. Quite a grown man now, eh? And this must be Amelia, whom you are to marry. Ah, I am filled with pride. You have proved yourself a fine boy, Jerry." It seemed that she still had the vague idea that Jherek had been one of her original charges. "I expect 'daddy' is proud of you, too!" She turned her head a full ninety degrees to look fondly at Lord Jagged, who pursed his lips in what might have been an embarrassed smile.
"Oh, very proud," he said. "Good morning Amelia. Jherek."
"Good morning, Sir Machiavelli." Amelia relished his discomfort. "How go your schemes?"
Lord Jagged relaxed, laughing. "Very well, I think. Nurse and I have a couple of modifications to make to a circuit. And you two? Do you flourish?"
"We are comfortable," she told him.
"Still — engaged?"
"Not yet married, Lord Jagged, if that is what you ask."
"Mr. Underwood still in the city?"
"So we hear from My Lady Charlotina."
"Aha."
Amelia looked at Lord Jagged suspiciously, but his answering expression was bland.
"We must be on our way." The swan began to drift clear of the locomotive. "Time waits for no man, you know. Not yet, at any rate. Farewell!"
They waved to him and the swan sailed on. "Oh, he is so devious," she said, but without rancour. "How can a father and son be so different?"
"You think that?" The locomotive began to puff towards home. "And yet I have modelled myself on him for as long as I can remember. He was ever my hero."
She was thoughtful. "One seeks for signs of corruption in the son if one witnesses them in the father, yet is it not fairer to see the son as the father, unwounded by the world?"
He blinked but did not ask her to elaborate as, with pensive eye, she contemplated the variegated landscape sweeping by below.
"But I suppose I envy him," she said.
"Envy Jagged? His intelligence?"
"His work. He is the only one upon the whole planet who performs a useful task."
"We made it beautiful again. Is that not 'useful', Amelia?"
"It does not satisfy me, at any rate."
"You have scarcely begun, however, to express your creativity. Tomorrow, perhaps, we shall invent something together, to delight our friends."
She made an effort to brighten. "I suppose that you are right. It is a question, as your father said, of attitude."
"Exactly." He hugged her. They kissed, but it seemed to him that her kiss was not as wholehearted as, of late, it had become.
From the next morning it was as if a strange fever took possession of Amelia Underwood. Her appearance in their breakfast room was spectacular. She was clad in crimson silk, trimmed with gold and silver, rather oriental in influence. There were curling slippers upon her feet; there were ostrich and peacock feathers decorating her hair and it was evident that she had painted or otherwise altered her face, for the eyelids were startling blue, the eyebrows plucked and their length exaggerated, the lips fuller and of astonishing redness, the cheeks glowing with what could only be rouge. Her smile was unusually wide, her kiss unexpectedly warm, her embrace almost sensual; scent drifted behind her as she took her place at the other end of the table.
"Good morning, Jherek, my darling!"
He swallowed a small piece of toast. It seemed to stick in his throat. His voice was not loud. "Good morning, Amelia. You slept well?"
"Oh, I did! I woke up a new woman. The new woman, if you would have it. Ha, ha!"
He tried to clear the piece of toast from his throat. "You seem very new. The change in appearance is radical."
"I would scarcely call it that, dear Jherek. Merely an aspect of my personality I have not shown you before. I determined to be less stuffy, to take a more positive view of the world and my place in it. Today, my love, we create !"
"Create?"
"It is what you suggested we do."
"Ah, yes. Of course. What shall we create, Amelia?"
"There is so much."
"To be sure. As a matter of fact, I had become fairly settled — that is, I had not intended…"
"Jherek, you were famous for your invention. You set fashion after fashion. Your reputation demands that you express yourself again. We shall build a scene to excel all those we have so far witnessed. And we shall have a party. We have accepted far too much hospitality and offered none until now!"
"True, but…"
She laughed at him, pushing aside her kedgeree, ignoring her porridge. She sipped at her coffee, staring out through the window at her hedges and her gardens. "Can you suggest anything, Jherek?"
"Oh — a small 'London' — we could make it together. As authentic as anything."
" 'London'? You would not repeat an earlier success, surely?"
"It was an initial suggestion, nothing more."
"You are admiring my new dress, I see."
"Bright and beautiful." He recalled the hymn they had once sung together. He opened his lips and took a deep breath, to sing it, but she forestalled him.
"It is based on a picture I saw in an illustrated magazine," she told him. "An opera, I think — or perhaps the music hall. I wish I knew some music hall songs. Would the cities be able to help?"
"I doubt if they can remember any."
"They are concerned these days, I suppose, with duller things. With Jagged's work."
"Well, not entirely…"
She rose from the table, humming to herself. "Hurry, Jherek dear. The morning will be over before we have begun!"
Reluctantly, as confused by this role as he had been confused when first they had met, he got up, almost desperately trying to recapture a mood which had always been normal to him, until, it seemed, today.
She linked her arm in his, her step rather springier than usual, perhaps because of the elaborate boots she wore, and they left the house and entered the garden. "I think now I should have kept my palace," she said. "You do not find the cottage dull?"
"Dull? Oh, no!"
He was surprised that she gave every hint of disapproving of his remark. She cast speculative eyes upon the sky, turned a power-ring, and made a garish royal blue tint where a moment ago there had been a relatively subdued sunrise. She added broad streaks of bright red and yellow. "So!"
Beyond the willows and the cypresses was what remained of the wasteland. "Here," she said, "is what Jagged told us was to be our canvas. It can contain anything — any folly the human mind can invent. Let us make it a splendid folly, Jherek. A vast folly."