The room was full of women. I kept in the garden, but I could see and hear them through the open door. I could see and hear all: the sunny sitting room, with its broad window ledges, on which were pots of calceolarias, with spotted, pouch-like blossoms; the women, with children at their skirts or buried in their cotton bodices. All waiting and twittering in that house of death. I knew every line of the local paper. The long clay pipe which Jib in pity had bestowed on me was cool, but it hurt my throat to draw such a long way. I smoked it from sentiment. I like those long clays, but properly speaking they should go with village politics. Jimmy was on his back in the orchard, deep in grass which had not been cut yet, rolling his last cigarette with long, transparent fingers. But he was waiting like the rest of us. He started up on his elbow when the sound came. We all heard it through the closed doors of bedroom and staircase. That sound! The wheezing creak of a chain. A minute later came the clear, deliberate chime of three. Then all the women and the two sons remembered that for six days no one had thought to draw up the clock. There was then no secret, no sin; no eating, biting prick of conscience. * * * * * She was dead by the open case, on her knees, with one crooked-out hand caught round the open door. Her eyes, wide open still, were on the softly swaying pendulum, and the heavy weight was drawn high. Jib, who had inherited his share of her practicality, and more, went up softly as soon as he was allowed to and turned the hand round to the proper place, each hour chiming in the quiet room. Four. Five. Six. Seven. It was evening. The haymakers had gone and a stifling mist was creeping across the cropped meadows. The promise of another blazing day. “Ah! to think it was only _that_ she wanted.” The layer-out extended her hand and drew down her sweetly curved mouth. “I knew there was something on her mind; there offen is with us poor women. We’ve all been young----” She broke off discreetly, in the presence of the sons. “But who’d ha’ thought of that plaguey clock? Why, any of us might ha’ drawed it up if we’d ha’ thought. I might ha’ earned good money at the hayin’ this week.” She went down the flagged path through the orchard to the gate. Jimmy, half buried again in grass, long white daisies, and the delicate summer orchis, stared at her, and his face changed. “She reminds me of someone I used to know,” he said, and then stopped abruptly. It was the only peep he ever gave me into his inner life. But I remembered afterward. We sat out until dusk, smoking--what dust of tobacco we had--and looking up trains. Jib and Zak had gone upstairs. Their voices came down to us, through the window with the greenish glass, which was now swung back. They were discussing the coming sale. “A feather bed allus fetches money.” “There’s folk--gentry--as likes this oak.”