THE WINDOWband had not said enough, with his caustic saying thatit would not be fine to-morrow, this odious little manwent and rubbed it in all over again.

‘Perhaps it will be fine to-morrow,’ she said, smooth-ing his hair.

All she could do now was to admire the refrigerator,and turn the pages of the Stores list in the hope thatshe might come upon something like a rake, or a mow-ing-machine, which, with its prongs and its handles,would need the greatest skill and care in cutting out.All these young men parodied her husband, she re-flected; he said it would rain; they said it would be apositive tornado.

But here, as she turned the page, suddenly her searchfor the picture of a rake or a mowing-machine was in-terrupted. The gruff murmur, irregularly broken bythe taking out of pipes and the putting in of pipes whichhad kept on assuring her, though she could not hearwhat was said (as she sat in the window), that themen were happily talking; this sound, which had lastednow half an hour and had taken its place soothinglyin the scale of sounds pressing on top of her, such asthe tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark nowand then, ‘How’s that? How’s that?’ of the childrenplaying cricket, had ceased; so that the monotonousfall of the waves on the beach, which for the most partbeat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughtsand seemed consolingly to repeat over and over againas she sat with the children the words of some oldcradle song, murmured by nature, ‘I am guardingyou — I am your support’, but at other times suddenlyand unexpectedly, especially when her mind raiseditself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no21
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