How did one pass the time when one was blind? Six days had gone by since she had told him, days filled with the echo of people round occupying themselves on his account. Mamma had had three long conferences with Mrs. Palmer, conferences which had reached him through vague references as to what he was going to do, with not a word as to what he was going to do now. Nan was struggling with an emotion already waning. Her long silences, in which she sent out waves of sentimentality, told that she was trying to freeze what was left into permanency. The nurse helped him grudgingly back to health, the new life was forming, and it was even more boring than the former. They read to him in turn for hours on end, Mamma talked of finding a professional reader. It was now so ordinary to be blind. He was in the long chair, under the cedar on the lawn. He felt the sky low and his bandages tight. The air nosed furtively through the branches and made the leaves whisper while it tickled his face. Pigeons were cooing, catching each other up, repeating, answering, as if all the world depended on their little loves. It was the sound he liked best about the garden; he yawned and began to doze. He was alone for the moment. Nan had left him to take a cup of tea. The nurse was taking the daily walk that was necessary to her trade union health, and Mrs. Haye had gone up to the village to console Mrs. Trench, whose week-old baby was dying. Herbert, leaning on the sill of the kitchen window, was making noises at Mrs. Lane while she toyed with a chopper, just out of his reach. Weston was lost in wonder, love and praise before the artichokes, he had a camera in his pocket and had taken a record of their splendour. Twenty years on and he would be showing it to his grandchildren, to prove how things did grow in the old days. Twenty years ago Pinch had seen better. Harry was hissing over a sporting paper; Doris in an attic was letting down her hair, she was about to plait the two soft pigtails. Jenny, the laundry cat, was very near the sparrow now, by the bramble in the left-hand corner of the drying ground.