Page 254 - sons-and-lovers

He crouched down and turned up the bells of the little
blue flowers.
‘They’re a glorious colour!’ he said.
‘Aren’t they!’ she cried. ‘I guess they come from Swit-
zerland, where they say they have such lovely things. Fancy
them against the snow! But where have they come from?
They can’t have BLOWN here, can they?’
Then he remembered having set here a lot of little trash
of bulbs to mature.
‘And you never told me,’ she said.
‘No! I thought I’d leave it till they might flower.’
‘And now, you see! I might have missed them. And I’ve
never had a glory of the snow in my garden in my life.’
She was full of excitement and elation. The garden was
an endless joy to her. Paul was thankful for her sake at last
to be in a house with a long garden that went down to a field.
Every morning after breakfast she went out and was happy
pottering about in it. And it was true, she knew every weed
and blade.
Everybody turned up for the walk. Food was packed, and
they set off, a merry, delighted party. They hung over the
wall of the mill-race, dropped paper in the water on one
side of the tunnel and watched it shoot out on the other.
They stood on the foot-bridge over Boathouse Station and
looked at the metals gleaming coldly.
‘You should see the Flying Scotsman come through at
half-past six!’ said Leonard, whose father was a signalman.
‘Lad, but she doesn’t half buzz!’ and the little party looked
up the lines one way, to London, and the other way, to Scot-