“Getting on all right with the pretty pictures, dearie?” she asked.
“When’s Peter coming back?” asked Joan.
“Oh, not for a longish bit,” said Mrs. Pybus. “You see, he’s going to school.”
“Can I go to school?”
“Not ’is school. He’s going to a boy school.”
“Oh!” said Joan, learning for the first time that schools have sexes. “Can I go out in the garden?”
“It isn’t much of a garden,” said Mrs. Pybus. “But what there is you’re welcome.”
It wasn’t much of a garden. Rather it was a yard, into which a lean-to scullery, a coal shed, and a dustbin bit deeply. Along one side was a high fence cutting it off from a similar yard, and against this high fence a few nasturtiums gingered the colour scheme. A clothes-line stretched diagonally across this space and bore a depressed pair of black stockings, and in the corner at the far end a lilac bush was slowly but steadily and successfully wishing itself dead. The opposite corner was devoted to a collection of bottles, the ribs of an umbrella, and a dust-pan that had lost its handle. From beneath this curious rather than pleasing accumulation peeped the skeleton of a “rockery” built of brick clinkers and free from vegetation of any sort. An unseen baby a garden or two away deplored its existence loudly. At intervals a voice that sounded like the voice of an embittered little girl cut across these lamentations:
“Well, you shouldn’t ’ave broke yer bottle,” said the voice, with a note of moral demonstration....
Joan stayed in this garden for exactly three minutes. Then she returned to Mrs. Pybus, who was engaged in some dim operations with a kettle in the kitchen. “Drat this old kitchener!” said Mrs. Pybus, rattling at a damper.