at her in the golden evening light. Seen thus, this little old Dutch
garden seemed to Mary the prettiest thing she had ever looked upon.
There were beds of tulips and hyacinths, ranunculus, narcissus,
tuberose, making a blaze of colour against the old box borders, a foot
high. The crumbling old brick walls of the outbuildings, and that
dungeon-like wall which formed the back of the new house, were clothed
with clematis and wistaria, woodbine and magnolia. All that loving
labour could do had been done day by day for the last forty years to
make this confined space a thing of beauty. Mary went out of the dark
stable into the sunny garden, and looked round her, full of admiration
for James Steadman's work.

'If ever Jack and I can afford to have a garden, I hope we shall be able
to make it like this,' she thought. 'It is such a comfort to know that
so small a garden can be pretty: for of course any garden we could
afford must be small.'

Lady Mary had no idea that this quadrangle was spacious as compared with
the narrow strip allotted to many a suburban villa calling itself 'an
eligible residence.'

In the centre of the garden there was an old sundial, with a stone bench
at the base, and, as she came upon an opening in the circular yew tree
hedge which environed this sundial, and from which the flower beds
radiated in a geometrical pattern, Lady Mary was surprised to see an old
man--a very old man--sitting on this bench, and basking in the low light
of the westering sun.

His figure was shrunken and bent, and he sat with his chin resting on
the handle of a crutched stick, and his head leaning forward. His long