If life has anything more to offer than this it will be found at Holly House, where there are babies.  Babies give an added excitement to the master’s homecoming, for almost anything may have happened to them while he has been away.  Dorothy perhaps has cut a new tooth and Anne may have said something really clever about the baker’s man.  In the morning, too, Anne will walk with him to the end of the road; it is perfectly safe, for in Acacia Road nothing untoward could occur.  Even the dogs are quiet and friendly.  I like to think of the master of Holly House saying good-bye to Anne at the end of the road and knowing that she will be alive when he comes back in the evening.  That ought to make the day’s work go quickly.

But it is the Cedars which gives us the secret of the happiness of the suburbs.  The Cedars you observe is a grander house altogether; there is a tennis lawn at the back.  And there are grown-up sons and daughters at the Cedars.  In such houses in Acacia Road the delightful business of love-making is in full swing.  Marriages are not “arranged” in the suburbs; they grow naturally out of the pleasant intercourse between the Cedars, the Elms, and Rose Bank.  I see Tom walking over to the Elms, racket in hand, to play tennis with Miss Muriel.  He is hoping for an invitation to remain to supper, and indeed I think he will get it.  Anyhow he is going to ask Miss Muriel to come across to lunch to-morrow; his mother has so much to talk to her about.  But it will be Tom who will do most of the talking.

I am sure that the marriages made in Acacia Road are happy.  That is why I have no fears for Holly House and Laburnum Lodge.  Of course they didn’t make love in this Acacia Road; they are come from the Acacia Road of some other suburb, wisely deciding that they will be better away from their people.  But they met each other in the same way as Tom and Muriel are meeting; He has seen Her in Her own home, in His home, at the tennis club, surrounded by the young bounders (confound them!) of Turret Court and the Wilderness; She has heard of him falling off his bicycle or quarrelling with his father.  Bless you, they know all about each other; they are going to be happy enough together.

And now I think of it, why of course there is a local theatre where they can do their play- going, if they are as keen on it as that.  For ten shillings they can spread from the stage box an air of luxury and refinement over the house; and they can nod in an easy manner across the stalls to the Cedars in the opposite box—­ in the deep recesses of which Tom and Muriel, you may be sure, are holding hands.

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