She heard the clock strike the half hour. Half-past five. Not yet. "When it strikes seven I shall go and tell Mamma."
She lay down on her bed and listened for the strokes of the clock. She felt nothing but an immense fatigue, an appalling heaviness. Her back and arms were loaded with weights that held her body down on to the bed.
"I shall never be able to get up and tell her."
Six. Half-past. At seven she got up and went downstairs. Through the open side door she saw her mother working in the garden.
She would have to get her into the house.
"Mamma—darling."
But Mamma wouldn't come in. She was planting the last aster in the row. She went on scooping out the hole for it, slowly and deliberately, with her trowel, and patting the earth about it with wilful hands. There was a little smudge of grey earth above the crinkles in her soft, sallow-white forehead.
"You wait," she said.
She smiled like a child pleased with itself for taking its own way.
Mary waited.