He pulled himself together, after a while, and went off about his business, but the beauty of the young spring day was largely spoiled for him. He even shrank from it, now, especially when it called to him, attracting his attention with scent and sigh in the fashion peculiar to the spring. Instead of soothing and heartening him, as it had always done before, it now seemed almost to attack him. He shrank from The Cat, too, especially from the sight of the sun touching it as it stalked across the gardens; and, going into his little office to examine his post which had just arrived, he shrank when he found catalogues and circulars addressed to “The Head Gardener.” But most of all he found himself shrinking when he had to approach any of his men, fearing to find some other of them with Len’s petition ready upon his lips. As it happened, indeed, not one of them as much as hinted at his going, let alone applied for his post; but he continued to shrink from them, nevertheless. Self-conscious with his staff for almost the only time in his life, he felt that they talked about him when they saw him coming, and talked again when he went away. He felt sure, at all events, that they knew what was happening or about to happen, together with the fact of Machell’s application. Discreet as they might choose to be on their own account, they must at least be aware of that. He wondered how long the question of his retirement had been discussed among them, and how much time they had given him. It humiliated him to think that the struggle between himself and his wife should apparently be common knowledge. Perhaps they had even betted upon the contest, he said to himself, bitterly, backing first one and then the other? Or, perhaps, he added, with a cynicism which was very foreign to him, they, too, had known that he would be defeated from the start?... VI The impending change, he found, was already at work upon the house when he went in to his dinner. The whole place was upset. Cupboards and doors stood open; shelves had been stripped; while the contents of the parlour looked as though they had been having a waltzing competition. There was a large packing-case in the coal-hole, and another in the larder. Things which were usually upstairs had somehow managed to get down, while other things, which he had not seen for years, were strewn about the kitchen. The very atmosphere of the house seemed to have been shaken and churned,--to have been stirred up as violently as Mattie stirred her puddings. If he had felt at breakfast as though they were already at the station, he was now absolutely convinced that they were actually on the steamer.