“Yes. That’s all.”
Pillar took from his pocket a small red notebook, in which he began to write.
“What is it, Pillar? What are you writing?”
“Awning, sir. So far only awning. That’s all.”
“Why awning?”
“The usual accompaniment to a wedding, sir. It’s as well to get things in hand.”
II
The woman who lives alone and weeds
Forgets her own and gives to others’ needs.
Elsie Carston lived in the country, in the village of Bestways, and her life she ordered according to the sojournings abroad of her brother and his wife. It was for their children—she told herself and sometimes others—that she lived in the country; but she knew it was not quite true. When we deceive ourselves and know it, we are on the way to salvation. Elsie was undoubtedly on the way to salvation,—a long way on,—but she did stop on the way, now and then, to look back. She liked to feel that if she had not devoted herself to her brother’s children she would have travelled. She sometimes allowed people to believe that she thirsted for deserts and longed to climb camels; but if those people had seen her in her garden fringing the skirts of the walks with thrift, and embroidering the borders with pansies and pinks, they would not have believed her anxious to leave her garden and her work. She loved Bestways. Her house was of warm red brick—Georgian, she would tell you with pride. It was old, certainly: the garden that held it in its arms—as it were, hugging it—was old too, older than the house possibly. The yew hedges had been planted by people of long ago, who perhaps spoke of the day when the hedges should be grown quite high and they not there to see. There must always be in a garden that sadness. Therefore those who have a garden should also—if they may—have children, whose children will live to walk under the trees they plant.