Out in the little garden the box hedges and borders looked almost black, making the roses between them a warmer, deeper red, and whitening the white rose over the cavern that was the porch. Beside the parlour window a tall yew stood up, clipped like Cleopatra’s needle and as straight. The little garden had peculiarly the air of refuge and close, set as it was between the desolation of the sands and the lesser and different desolation of the marsh. The marsh was lonely, of course, but Nature was always there, growing her grass and plants and flowers, her acorns and cones fashioning into trees, her thorn hedges throwing up every year their close and towering screens; and, after Nature, man, with his cattle and thin ploughs, his barns and shippons, his clustered chimney-stacks. But out on the sand there were only sand and lost shells, and the goalless footprints of flown birds. It was enemy ground, where neither blown seed nor human hearth might take hold. The marsh had a peace of its own as well as its fear; but out on the sands there was only fear. One window in the kitchen pretended to itself that there was neither sand nor fear. It looked across the square fields to the higher land behind the marsh, over tall hedges thick with rose to sloping meadowland and woods. Up in the sky was a climbing, high-hung road, and below it a hidden village with a seeking spire. On the marsh between the straight hedges all the roads ran straight.... It was to this window that Agnes crossed to look out. “Hadn’t you best be getting off?” she enquired, pressing her face against the pane. “It’ll never do to be hanging about and miss your time. He’ll likely think he’s not wanted if you’re a bit behind.” “Nay, there’s no call to be off yet,” Thomas replied tranquilly, without offering to move. “We’ll catch a sight on ’em on t’road, long afore they’re here.” He settled his jacket leisurely, looking at himself in the little kitchen glass, mottled and cracked in its worn mahogany frame. It looked old and strange on the new face of the wall—almost the only thing in the kitchen that wasn’t new. “’Twas half-past six, wasn’t it, they said? It wants a bit to that yet.” “What was it you went and settled wi’ Bob, after all?” “I was to meet ’em at meader gate so as to give the old man an arm. It’s over rough riding up for him, I doubt. He’ll be best on his feet by a deal.” “Ay, old bones can’t abide being rumbled about. I shouldn’t wonder but he’s a bit shaky after his ride, so you mun be sure to be there on the tick.... Eh, well, we’ll have him as right as a bobbin afore so long!” “It’ll take a while, will that!” Thomas frowned. Staring, he saw the face in the glass grow older and rather grim. “He’s been going downhill sharp, lately, has the old chap. Last time I was at the cottage he give me a fair fright. It was a bad job his having to gang to Marget an’ Bob.”