Through this shady precinct he passed carrying his hand-bag, pausing only in a sudden patch of light where a bank of tawny scabious diffused an aromatic perfume in the sun. He paused, not because he was impressed by their garish beauty, but because many of the heads were now frequented by a new hatch of Comma butterflies eagerly expanding their serrated wings, drugged already with the flowers’ harsh honey. Edwin had never seen this uncommon butterfly before. In the neighbourhood of St. Luke’s the species, which is notoriously capricious, had never appeared. He wished that he had a butterfly net with him: for by catching one of them he would have scored over Widdup. So he passed to Mrs. Barrow’s house, a dark Georgian structure as twisted and autumnal as her garden, and there, in a gloomy sitting-room, he found the old lady herself, a little demure creature with round-hunched, shawl-covered shoulders, like the dormouse in _Alice in Wonderland_, taking tea with her companion, a decorous lady of the same age named Miss Beecock. They did their best to make Edwin feel at home. They never mentioned his mother, but it was so obvious that their maidenly commonplaces were only designed to divert his mind from the tragic shadow which he carried with him, that Edwin felt inclined to scandalise them by talking of it. . . . Their deliberate awkward kindness, the cautious glances which they exchanged, the little sniff of emotion which Mrs. Barrow concealed in her empty teacup, when the pitiful contemplation of Edwin’s youth and innocence overcame her, would have been amusing if there had been room for anything amusing on the darkened earth. When they had finished the buttered scones and medlar jelly which Mrs. Barrow made from fruit that fell on the dark leaf-mould of her garden, Mrs. Barrow herself moved with short steps to a mahogany bureau, and calling Edwin to her side, showed him one of those secret drawers whose secret everybody knows, smelling of cedar wood and aged russia leather. From this drawer she produced a purse made of beadwork, and from the purse her fragile fingers extracted a Georgian five-shilling piece, which, with a sigh, she then presented to Edwin. “If I were you,” she said, “I don’t think I should spend it. Old coins like that are valuable. Mr. Barrow had a great interest in anything old and historical.” Edwin was so surprised by this generosity that he almost forgot to thank her; but Miss Beecock, in a shrill, soft voice, reminded him of his duty, saying: “Now, isn’t that kind of Mrs. Barrow, Edwin?” Edwin hastily agreed that it was, and the old ladies smiled at one another, as though they were saying, “Isn’t that clever of us, to give him a toy that will take his mind off his mother?” In the silence that followed, a canary which had been pecking at a lump of sugar stuck in the bars of his cage, attracted by the bright hues of the ribbon on Mrs. Barrow’s cap, broke into a shrill twitter.