Gainah went round to the front of the house. She had a bed of lilies of the valley beneath the umbrella yew. She stooped down behind the wall of somber green and saw the tender leaves uncurling. One root already had a cluster of snowy buds. Then, as she stooped, she heard a voice—the high, imperious voice of Pamela. Looking through the yew, she saw her standing by the wall with Jethro. She was talking very fast, moving impetuously now and then, throwing out her firm white hands, and pointing eagerly.
“It would be the simplest thing in the world. Oh, you must do it—please. Then the house would look like Turle. You take away the gate and build the wall along—so. Then you take up those horrid cabbages.” She threw a look of intolerance at the leggy stalks of Brussels sprouts which were thickly covered with widely opened miniature cabbages.
“Chalcraft likes this patch. It is the richest in the garden, so he says. In June the old man will dibble in his cauliflowers; they want a rich soil.”
“They’ll grow anywhere; ground is ground,” she cried, with Cockney superiority. “You are too indulgent to Chalcraft; he and Gainah are past work. They should be pensioned off. She might be allowed to come to dinner on Sundays.”
“She has been a mother to me.”
Gainah, behind the yew, her head furtively poked forward, saw the girl look at him—a look that said plainly enough:
“And shall not I be your wife? Doesn’t a man leave all and cleave to his wife?”
The elder woman’s hands, rubbed over with wet mold which was drying and caking, crossed convulsively on her chest. This was not new to her—this comedy of love. She had played it, too, with something less of fancy. She knew what was coming. She waited, sick at heart, for the first kiss. She nearly fell upon the half-opened leaves of the young lilies when Jethro dropped his massive head and pointed his lips to Pamela’s. Her fingers lost their last hold of the domestic scepter when she heard the quick, liquid chirrup of his kiss on the firm scarlet flesh.