Edith, watching for the propitious moment, could not tell by what signs
she would recognise it when it came. Her own hour was the early evening.
She had always brightened towards six o'clock, the time of her brother's
home-coming.

To-day he had removed himself, to give her her chance with Anne. She
could see him pottering about the garden below her window. He had kept
that garden with care. He had mown and sown, and planted, and weeded,
and watered it, that Edith might always have something pretty to look at
from her window. With its green grass plot and gay beds, the tiny oblong
space defied the extending grime and gloom of Scale. This year he had
planted it for Anne. He had set a thousand bulbs for her, and many
thousand flowers were to have sprung up in time to welcome her. But
something had gone wrong with them. They had suffered by his absence. As
Edith looked out of the window he was stooping low, on acutely bended
knees, sorrowfully preoccupied with a broken hyacinth. He had his back to
them.

To Edith's mind there was something heart-rending in the expression of
that intent, innocent back, so surrendered to their gaze, so unconscious
of its own pathetic curve. She wondered if it appealed to Anne in that
way. She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it
did not appeal to her in any way at all.

"Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of
mine--of yours, I mean."

"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not
jealous."