Just below the window was the curved flower bed Mrs. Bagot had cut out of the grass patch that was the front garden. The flower bed clung to the bow-window wall like a collar of daffodils, crocuses, and snowdrops. The grass, a tiny plot, was bright green and very trim. Mrs. Bagot had clipped it the night before, and this morning she had washed down the narrow red-tiled path that led to the front gate. The front garden was about the same size as the front sitting room, the red-tiled path was about the same width as the front hall and its hat-and-coat rack and its table, where the clock now stood at ten minutes past four.

The Bishop did not come hurrying around the corner from the main road and he did not come striding up the street. He arrived in a car, a big black car that rolled slowly up the street until it stopped before the house. It was a very important-looking car. Lily ran shrieking for her mother, and after that everything was all right. She got the front door open and was down the front path and had the gate open exactly at the moment when the chauffeur opened the rear door of the car and began helping out a large old man who was dressed all in black and wore a black hat. Lily had never been so close to a chauffeur before, and she admired his puttees. Margaret pushed past her into the street and stood stiffly with her back pressed against the garden railing and her little face radiant with excitement. Mrs. Bagot stepped forward to offer her hand in help, although holy awe and superstition made her unwilling to touch the consecrated Bishop. She had been taught, and she had taught Lily and Margaret, that you never shake hands with a priest, and now, with the chauffeur’s firm hands under his arm, the Bishop got out of the car and stood almost upright, leaning on his two sticks. He was a very shabby old man. Even Mrs. Bagot, standing in helpless veneration, could see that, and she also saw that his blue eyes were vague and distant, as though they had seen enough and could accept no more impressions, and were no longer inclined to make the effort to separate faces he had seen before from the faces of strangers. He put his sticks together and held out his hand to Mrs. Bagot with a humble and ministering forgiveness that was too calm to hold pity and too proud to hold reproach.