'The garden looks a little straggly,' suggests he insidiously, knowing her weak side. 'A great many things want tying up. The beds need edging, and the carnations ought to be layered.' 'You are very learned,' says she, smiling. 'Does the F.O. teach you gardening?' 'Well, no; that is not included in the curriculum. That is an extra.' 'Who did teach you, then?' asks she, with an inquisitiveness which, as soon as the words are out of her mouth, shocks and surprises herself. Can it be Betty? A Betty that loves her children and digs in her garden! If it is so, Peggy will have to reconstruct her altogether. 'My sister.' His sister! What a relief! It would have been so humiliating to have had her strongest taste degraded by a community with painted, posturing Betty. 'You have a sister?' '_Had._ There is a good deal of difference.' And with that he leaves her abruptly. But he returns next day at the same hour; and, as there has blown a boisterous wind in the night, which has prostrated top-heavy plants, torn off leaves, and scattered flower-petals, she has not the heart to refuse his aid in a general tidying and sweeping up. Next day he clips the edges of the borders very nicely with a pair of shears; and the next day they gather lavender off the same bush. Gathering lavender, particularly off the same bush, is a good deal more productive of talk than mowing; nor is it possible to her to keep her new servant within the bounds of a silence to which she had never attempted to confine her old one. But, indeed, by the time that they have come to the lavender day the wish for his silence has ceased. On the second--the general sweeping day--he had told her about his sister--had told her in short dry sentences how he had lost her; and she had cried out of sympathy for him who did not cry, and had said to herself, 'What if it had been my Prue?' On the third day, though assuredly no word or hint of Betty had passed his lips, somehow, by woman's instinct, sharpened by observation, she has sprung to a conclusion, not very erroneous, as to his garish mock-happiness and his shattered life. On the fourth day she asks herself why he never comes except in the forenoon; and herself answers the question, that it is because lazy Betty lies late, and until one o'clock has no knowledge of his comings or goings. On the fifth day she resolves that he shall come in the afternoon. She will be visited openly or not at all. So when, giving his bundle of lavender into her hands, he says with a valedictory formula, 'The same hour to-morrow?' she answers quietly: 'I am afraid not; I have an engagement with Mrs. Evans for to-morrow morning; we must give up the garden to-morrow, unless'--as if with an afterthought--'unless you could come later--some time in the afternoon?' His countenance falls. What property has he in his own afternoons? His weary afternoons of hammock and scandal and cigarettes?