"He'd thrown away his prospects! Then I can't forgive him for his
behaviour last year--never coming down to see us, I mean. It was so--so
ungrateful! Handsome presents don't make up for that sort of thing. I
used to long to send the things back."

"I don't think you're fair," began Mr. Tosswill deprecatingly. "He did
write me a very nice letter, Janet, explaining that it was impossible for
him to come."

"Well, I suppose we must make the best of it--particularly as he says
that he's come back to England for good."

She went out of the room, and so into the garden--back to the border she
had left unwillingly but at which she now glanced down with a sensation
of disgust. She felt thoroughly ruffled and upset--a very unusual
condition for her to be in, for Janet Tosswill was an equable and
happy-natured woman, for all her affectionate and sensitive heart.

She told herself that it was true the whole world had altered in the last
nine years--everything had altered except Beechfield. The little Surrey
village seemed to her mind exactly the same as it was when she had come
there, as a bride, fourteen years ago, except that almost everybody in
it, from being comfortably off, had become uncomfortably poor. Then all
at once, she smiled. The garden of Old Place was very different from the
garden she had found when she first came there. It had been a melancholy,
neglected, singularly ugly garden--the kind of garden which only costly
bedding-out had made tolerable in some prosperous early Victorian day.
Now it was noted for its charm and beauty even among the many beautiful
gardens of the neighbourhood, and during the War she had made quite a lot