The white roses, and all the pinks and all the reds, made quite a big bunch. She had put them around in this room and in the front room and in the hall, and then, foolishly, she had put a small bunch in the children’s room to make it seem less deserted. When she wrote to Lily and Margaret tonight she would tell them there were flowers waiting for them in their room, beside their window, on the little table that was all marked and stained with chalk and ink and putty and plasticine. The window in the children’s room corresponded with this window where she stood — they had the back bedroom. The paper on the walls of that room was cream-colored and covered with miniature garlands of small blue flowers. The flowers were faded and as indistinct as the real flowers in her garden were today in the rain. It was old wallpaper and, like the yellow rosebush, it had been here when she and Martin moved in, years ago.

All the windows in the house were closed tight against the rain, but the damp had crept in anyway. Mrs. Bagot turned from the window. Her feet and legs were cold — that was how people got rheumatism. On a day as bad as this, if the children were here, she would have lighted the fire hours ago, even if it was an extravagance. There was no use risking colds and coughs. She took the box of matches from the mantelpiece and knelt down on the hearthrug. It was between two and three weeks since they had needed a fire, and the coals were nearly hidden under a litter of tiny balls of paper, thrown in there, she knew, by Lily. She hated to burn them up. She took one ball and smoothed it out and, as she expected, it was a code. Lily was always hoping to discover a code that would be easy to write and impossible for anybody except herself to understand. Mrs. Bagot thought of taking the others out, just to look at them, but then she thought better of it. If she continued to think like this about the children she would bring bad luck on them. She struck the match impatiently and touched it here and there to the newspaper at the bottom of the grate. There were tears in her eyes. She wanted the children to enjoy themselves, but she wondered if they thought of her at all when they were away from her. They would be falling in love with their aunt and with their uncles. They would come back at the end of the month pining for the farm and the animals and all the freedom they had down there. Well, it couldn’t be helped. Maybe it was all for the best.