Hermione had got the woman's address, specially for us, she said--meaning for Bettina. Hermione was always advising Bettina about her clothes and making the child discontented with what she had. We had not wanted any "little tame dressmaker" at the time, but we were enchanted now, when Bettina turned up the card inscribed: "MADAME AURORE, "87, CRUTCHLEY STREET, "LEICESTER SQUARE." "Madame Aurore!" my mother echoed. "No doubt a cockney of the cockneys!" * * * * * She was not a cockney. And she was a great surprise. CHAPTER XXII PLANTING THYME The morning she came was the morning Eric said good-bye "just for a few days," he dreaming, as little as we, of what those few days were to bring. And so, ignorant of what I was facing, I was almost happy in spite of the parting, because of what Eric said to me that last Monday morning. The cart had been ordered to go for Madame Aurore at 9:42. Directly after breakfast my mother and Bettina set about trimming hats--a business in which they scorned my help. I had something particular to finish in the garden. I went on digging up the bare patches on the south bank, sharing the delight of all things growing and blowing and flying under the glorious cloud-piled sky of May. I listened intently, as I worked, to that orchestra of tiny sound underneath the loud birds' singing. The spring, unlike last year's, had been cold and late; many days like this--with crisp air and fitful sunshine. Only here, in the sheltered south-west corner, were the bees in any number tuning up their fiddles. I looked up from my work and saw--at that most unusual hour--Eric Annan at the gate! I saw, too, that he looked odd--excited. I dropped the garden-fork. "What is the matter?" I said. "Matter? What should be the matter?" I only smiled. It was so like Eric not to be pleased at hearing he had betrayed himself. "I thought you looked as if--as if something had happened," I said. What I meant was, as if something were about to happen. Only one thing, I thought, could make Eric look like that; make him interrupt his precious morning; one thing, alone, could have grown so great overnight that the heart of man could not conceal it, or contain it, for another hour. But, even if my hopes were not misleading me, I felt that Eric would not like my having guessed so much. To hide my eyes from him I bent down over my basket. I lifted out tufts of aromatic green, and set them firmly in the loosened soil. I pressed the earth down tight about their roots. "What are you planting there?" he asked. "Re-planting the wild thyme," I said. Something had killed it last year. "Where do you find wild thyme?" he asked. I told him how far I had to go for it. And when? Before breakfast! He looked astonished.