THE WINDOW 173'Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shiningand the birds singing,' She said compassionately,smoothing the little boy’s hair, for her husband, withhis caustic saying that it would not be fine, haddashed his spirits she could see. This going to theLighthouse was a passion of his, she saw, and then,as if her husband had not said enough, with hiscaustic saying that it would not be fine to-morrow,this odious little man went and rubbed it in all overagain.‘Perhaps it will be fine to-morrow,’ she said,smoothing his hair.
All she could do now was to admire the refrigera-tor, and turn the pages of the Stores list in the hopethat she might come upon something like a rake, ora mowing-machine, which, with its prongs and itshandles, would need the greatest skill and care incutting out. All these young men parodied herhusband, she reflected; he said it would rain; theysaid it would be a positive tornado.
But here, as she turned the page, suddenly hersearch for the picture of a rake or a mowing-machinewas interrupted. The gruff murmur, irregularlybroken by the taking out of pipes and the putting inof pipes which had kept on assuring her, though she
could not hear what was said (as she sat in thewindow), that the men were happily talking; thissound, which had lasted now half an hour and hadtaken its place soothingly in the scale of soundspressing on top of her, such as the tap of balls uponbats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then, ‘How’s
